


Elflocks

by LilacFree



Series: Elflocks 'verse [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bad Poetry, Canon-Typical Violence, Faerie Heritage, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 70,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23395243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacFree/pseuds/LilacFree
Summary: Harry Potter has non-human blood.  In childhood, he is contacted by his kin and given support and instruction.  How will these changes affect his Hogwarts career?  He is not the bold Gryffindor saviour people were expecting.  He is ready to love the wizarding world, but will it love him back?I expect there to be pairings in later stories, and for the rating to rise.
Series: Elflocks 'verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1682833
Comments: 51
Kudos: 126





	1. The Summer of Summer

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This story is complete in large part, but as I post, I go through that chapter and a couple of chapters past in search of inconsistencies and errors. As far as I know, I’m human and make mistakes. Nor, inexplicably, am I from the United Kingdom. What were my parents thinking? If you find any errors or blatant Americanisms, please let me know.

_‘They are almost relations of his, if all people say concerning the parentage of magicians be true.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

The child fled into the cluster of trees, instinctively seeking cover. A dog barked on his trail. The same instinct led the child to a tree with a low branch. He scrambled onto it, but the next highest one was out of his most stretched reach. He strained towards it anyway.

A hand came down from above, clasped his wrist and pulled him up to sit beside a girl all green and brown and gold. The dog found the tree and reared up against it, bouncing and barking. The girl leaned forward and caught the dog’s eyes with her own. “Good dog. Go home.” 

It stilled, sat, whuffed, stared up a moment. It trotted away.

The child gasped in a body-shaking breath. He squeezed up against the trunk. His fingernails dug into the bark. He stared at the girl beside him. ‘Girl’ was the only label he could think of. She looked girl-like, and taller than him. She wasn’t wearing clothes but she was wearing something on her body, though he could see patches of nut-brown skin. Her hair was bound up into loops and braids; it shone browny-gold where the sun dappled it through the leaves. Her eyes were large in her oval face: grey as rain clouds with the sun shining behind them.

He was eight years old as of yesterday. He hadn’t seen much of the world so far, but he knew he had never seen in it anyone like her, and yet somehow she was what she was supposed to be — someone you’d meet up a tree.

She held out a handful of berries cupped in a leaf. “May you never hunger.”

He was hungry. He took the berries two or three at a time. They tasted tarter than any jam he’d ever had, but he ate them all. The empty leaf fell away. Next she offered a golden lump, again wrapped in a leaf to which it was sticking. She broke off half and popped it into her own mouth. So he took the other half. He couldn’t mistake the flavor of honey, but it had flavor in it that he had no words for. Most of the firmer substance melted in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed the rest.

The grey eyes were expectant. She’d saved him, she’d greeted him, she’d fed him, now he was supposed to say the magic words: thank you. As if she were Aunt Petunia giving him Dudley’s cast-offs. As if she were Uncle Vernon letting him have a light bulb for his cupboard. He hated those words.

He licked at the remnants of honey in his mouth, and said instead, “May you never fall out of a tree.”

With a laugh, she swung herself from the branch and swooped up to another only to stretch herself out along it as casually as if she were on a bed. “A precious few bread crusts in your ashes, there have been. And not even a hair on your sack yet a war wound on your brow! I am lucky I am that the song of your two veins called to me, for you are a wonder.” She looked at him as if a light from him shone on her face. “If you say by what name you will know me, I will say by what name I will know you.”

Bits of metal glinted among the cloth and leather of her garb. One of her braids dangled down close to his face and from the end of it hung a blue thread tied about a stone with a hole in the middle. Sunlight traced down the braid dancing in the breeze, and the stone turned back and forth, flashing light from its middle. It was the last month of summer—yesterday had been his birthday, 31st July. Soon there would be school, which last year had proved to be full of people ready to believe him the troublemaker the Dursleys painted him.

“Summer. I’ll call you Summer.”

“If I be Summer, than you shall be Leaf.”

Better than Freak.

Summer flicked a bit of lichen at him. “Banish misfortune.”

“It can’t be that easy.”

“So says the unfortunate one, who bleeds and does not close the wound.”

That was obvious, but he didn’t understand why she would say it. “Is this about my singing veins?”

She laughed again, rubbing her cheek against the branch she lay on. “No and yes, and but yes again.” Summer’s eyes closed, she let her hair fall to the sides as if she was listening to something. Around the edges of her eyes he could see that the colour edging the lashes was more than a line of make-up. It was tiny figures, writing he could not read. “Leaf, if I should tell you things, then what you think you heard me tell you is what you think you know. A question is an open door: anything may go through. You must explain yourself to yourself,” she said coiling into a crouch as easy as a snake instead of the awkward levering a human would need. “You will see me again if you see me.” Summer straightened up and was gone as if a door that wasn’t there had closed between them.

He put his hand on the branch and wondered if he felt any lingering warmth there. Then Harry Potter climbed down from the tree and went back to the Dursleys’ home, hoping Marge Dursley had left and taken her dogs with her.

“Get out of the house. I don’t care where you go; stay out of trouble and be back by 4:30 to get supper started.” Aunt Petunia held the door open and locked it behind him. She was planning to have some of the mothers of Dudley’s friends over. He’d already baked biscuits for them and Petunia had already hit him with a wooden spoon for trying to take one to taste. Hunger aside, Harry was glad to be out of the house. He hadn’t been able to make it back to Summer’s tree, if it was her tree, if she was real, if he hadn’t gone completely mental, and if she was there.

Harry checked his route. The neighbours hated children cutting through their yards, but if he went out into the street he risked Dudley and his gang spotting him. He had to get down to the park, across the playground, and into the little wood. He peeked around the corner of the house. Were there watchers? The woman next door glared out her window at him. There was nothing for it but to try Mrs. Figg’s. He walked to the front of the house and looked both ways for the enemy. There were children a couple of blocks away, and yes, that was Dudley. The best thing about Dudley’s size was that he wasn’t much of a runner and he was easy to spot from a distance. It helped, but the faster ones in his gang were happy to catch Harry and hold him for Dudley.

He’d just have to do this the hard way. Harry openly crossed the street, cut through a yard where one house was for sale and the other was usually empty and trotted down Wysteria Lane to Mrs. Figg’s, in plain sight of everyone. He knocked on the door.

Mrs. Figg and a cat opened the door. “Oh, Harry Potter. Was I supposed to be minding you today?”

“No, Mrs. Figg. I thought I’d ask you if you needed any help around the house or in the garden.”

Others in the neighbourhood didn’t trust him enough for this. Perhaps they thought he’d ask for money, or worse, steal. Only Mrs. Figg had enough optimism to accept these offers.

“I suppose I can find something to keep you busy for an hour.”

It was litter boxes again. It was always litter boxes. At least he got a sandwich out of it, though a piece of limp plastic-like cheese between two limp slices of bread was… was food. Even so, Harry had a hard time getting it down his throat. When he stepped outside again, Dudley’s gang was gone. It was near to lunchtime and none of them cared to skip a meal.

There was a girl gang in the play area of the park: a handful of older girls trying to put make-up on each other. Harry circled around them. Girls that age were terrifying. They turned their heads to track him like buzzards looking for the dying. Harry followed the edge of the wood away from them. If they decided he would make a good chew toy he didn’t want them knowing which way he was headed. At last, he got out of their sight and was able to turn into the wood. This was not the direction Harry had come in the wood when the dog chased him. None of the trees looked quite right. He kept looking for that kindly low branch but couldn’t find it. 

He could call out. Sound like a mental case. Boy, 8, found chatting with trees.

A bee buzzed by his ear. What had Summer said? If you see me.

Harry looked up into the nearest tree. One step left and he’d be in Summer’s shadow as she sat astride a bough, ten feet up. Next to a bee hive. With a bee, and another bee, and more bees.

He didn’t care. He held his hands up to her. She reached down to him. Her arms didn’t suddenly stretch, but however it happened, Harry found himself sitting facing Summer on the branch.

“Why don’t the bees sting you?” He didn’t want to be stung, but he wanted Summer more.

“I know how to talk to the bees.”

“What do they say?”

“Bzzzzzzzz hmmmmm bzzzz.” Summer laughed. She pulled an apple out of some recess of her garb and polished it against a leather patch on her thigh. She took a bite, offered it to him, and they shared it back and forth. Sometimes a bee came to investigate the smell of apple juice. Harry sat as still as he could and watched a bee on his hand and felt the tiny feet on his skin. “The apple was tasty.”

“That was the tree’s doing, but I am glad to have shared it with you.”

“If I was a good listener, could I hear my singing veins?” Harry tensed up. It felt more important in his ears, the question, than it had on his tongue.

Summer’s eyes narrowed in amusement. “A young serpent, it is, green as a Leaf. Your mother and father are those two veins, which gave you all the blood of their ancestors, ‘whatever is begotten, born, and dies’.

“You knew my parents?”

“I have answered thrice already; I am not an oracle nor you my python. You don’t even offer to trade.”

Harry had to admit it sounded fair. All he’d given her was a name. “I didn’t mean to be rude. You should ask me questions or to do something for you.”

“Recite a poem for me.” A bee flew onto her nose and crept down to the sticky corner of her mouth.

Marvel of marvels, Harry managed to scrabble a poem up out of his memory. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky.” He was pretty sure there was more but at least that bit rhymed.

Summer smiled and the bee flew away. “What’s the best thing to put in a pie?”

Pie. He’d like to put a pie in him. Harry could swallow one whole. His mouth watered. He’d even try rhubarb, whatever that was. The pie hovered before his mind’s eye, big bites tearing through it.

“My teeth.”

“What is it that, the more you take away, the more it becomes?”

Harry didn’t even need to think twice. “Hunger.”

She reached out and pulled him close. Summer smelled like apples and dry grass. “There are all kinds of things you may eat, and some that may whet your appetite instead of satisfying it. Eat, but pay attention to what you eat. Nothing costs more than attention, in the having of it or the lack.” Her lips pressed feather-light on his eyelids.

When he opened his eyes he was standing on the ground. There was another apple in his hand.


	2. The Days Grow Short

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes back to school. It would bearable, if he had Summer, but summer is over.

  
_‘…the memories of one’s childhood are brittle things to lean upon.’ -William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

  
Harry didn’t see Summer again before school started, but he knew she was close. When he worked outside he would find little gifts of food wrapped up in leaves. They were only mouthfuls; there was always at least one. Harry found excuses to work outside, even if he had to smudge the windows. He was still hungry, but to know the food would come made him feel better. Sometimes there were greens wrapped around an egg. It was always an egg smaller than the chicken eggs Petunia bought though it didn’t taste different. He even began to recognise the living plants growing wild by the shapes of their leaves. Would she stop bringing him food when the weather turned and there were no greens?

It was at school that Harry first had a problem seeing, or so the teachers said when they complained to the Dursleys of his inattention. A pair of spectacles were forced onto his face. They did make a difference. He could focus on what was being said and what he was supposed to read. And when he took them off, everything was blurry.

He raked the leaves. There was no food hidden under them. He put away the hose. No leaf packet.

He went out to the woods. No Summer in any trees. Bees, yes.

In school they had a lesson about the seasons. Today, he was told, was the end of summer and tomorrow the beginning of autumn. The days were getting shorter, the teacher said, and the nights longer. He could feel that for himself when he raked the leaves, and Dudley jumped in them, so he had to rake them again, and be shouted at for taking too long. When he curled up in his cupboard and felt cool fingers of air slide around the edges of the door and through the louvre to stroke his skin. Summer was gone. He wanted to be gone, too.

He tried to not be there. In school, he did the minimum, kept his head down, avoided trouble. The only trouble he couldn’t avoid was Dudley. Dudley in his class, in his lunch, his recess, on the way to school and on the way home. But the worst Dudley was Dudley at home, where there was no escape except Dudley’s attention elsewhere. One day their class did a lesson on customs that were being abandoned because of ethical advances, such as fox-hunting. That’s all the gang needed to invent Harry-hunting. They intercepted him on the way to school and chased him into the school grounds, baying like hounds. Harry ran so hard his shoes started to come apart. He started to fall—and landed on the roof of the school. He lay there panting as softly as he could while the baying of the hunter-hounds drifted up to him. The school bell rang them off the scent.

Time passed. He didn’t mark it. They found him; they carried him inside. He let the scolding, questioning, complaining, run off his back like rain. He heard them calling Aunt Petunia and insisting she come pick him up. A teacher he didn’t know sat down beside him and put a sandwich in his hands. The green lettuce in it was first colour he noticed in all that grey autumn. His stomach trembled at each little bite.

“You don’t look big enough to me to cause such a fuss,” she said very softly so that only Harry could hear. “Eat up.” When he finished the sandwich, she gave him a pear and a wedge of cheese, and a bottle of lukewarm tea, all out of a brown bag. After he finished the food she led him to the toilet. He came out to find Aunt Petunia waiting for him, white-lipped with rage.

He spent the rest of the week in the cupboard. He’d done it before. But somewhere in the misery, Harry felt a tiny burning coal of resistance. There was kindness in the world for him, however random and unexpected. He wouldn’t forget it.

He wouldn’t give up.

The library was the best refuge. The school librarian didn’t like him, but Harry hunched his shoulders against her suspicious gaze and began to read his way through the fiction section. Anything would do to take him away. Some were gems: ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’, ‘The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe’. He could read them over and over, he could read them when he was in his cupboard, read them in his head. When he was full of words, Harry could forget the things he didn’t have.

It didn’t always work. When it didn’t, there was the option of Mrs. Figg, who would let Harry do chores for that eternal limp cheese sandwich. She would get upset and chivvy him out if he ever got the names of her cats wrong. It was boring and he could swear the scent of cat pee clung to him. It was still better than the Dursleys.

On the weekend, there was the public library. It was also another excellent way to avoid Dudley’s gang. Once inside, he was safe as long as he was quiet and didn’t make a mess. As long as he minded the time and got his chores and the cooking done, being out of the Dursleys’ sight was welcome to both sides.

Harry got through the days as best he could, shoving each one behind him and trying to manage the next. He worked to improve his cooking. Well-fed Dursleys were sleepy Dursleys content to criticise him from a chair. Questions about cooking were the most accepted by Aunt Petunia. Sadly, Petunia did not follow the male Dursleys’ example of stuffing herself into insensibility. Harry was not too proud to finish leftover food on a plate, but the one thing Vernon and Dudley could be counted on to clean was a plate of food. He was always trying to think of ways to get more to eat. Petunia’s hobby was to grudge him every morsel he ate. He counted score with every bite of food he slipped from under her watch.

Just when spring seemed about to make an appearance, Surrey had a last winter storm. Scraping snow off Vernon’s car was a miserable job at his height. It did get him out in the sunshine. In the early February morning it struck the snow at a low angle, dazzling from its surface so that it hurt to look at it. At least here near the driveway it was dingy slush. For a moment he pulled off his glasses and tried to rub the glare spots away. He was fairly sure that on this side of the car, he couldn’t be seen resting.

When Harry opened his eyes, there was something on the heap of snow that hadn’t been there when he closed them. It was a little bundle of cloth in a soft knot around a meat roll. It was chilled, but not icy. It was hand-made, not something out of a shop. Not that he examined it long — he shoved it in his mouth and looked around hurriedly. The world blurred around him. He started to set his glasses back on, then stopped himself.

The bundle hadn’t been blurry at all. The wad of cloth wasn’t blurry now. Slowly, Harry lowered his glasses onto his nose, at a slant to keep one eye uncovered. The cloth didn’t vanish when he looked at it through his glasses, but it lost something he couldn’t put into words. He folded it up and tucked it deep into his pocket then resumed clearing the driveway before Uncle Vernon left for work. Summer hadn’t deserted him.

Harry knew it would get him in trouble, but he ditched school and headed for the wood. He made a careful route with an eye for watchers in windows and in vehicles. There were plenty of people in the streets around Privet Drive who would love to catch a truant and brag about it to the neighbours. Maybe Summer might be in any given tree, or up a flagpole, but he wanted to look where he had first met her.

The trees of winter were not the trees of summer. The branches were bare except for a scattering of brown leaves and clumps of squirrels’ nests. He couldn’t spot the beehive. On the ground the snow lay thin and crusted with ice. Each step plunged his feet into damp chilliness that soaked quickly through his trainers. He looked up, but there was nowhere to hide, even with his glasses off. Harry rubbed his forearm across his face, getting some warmth back into his nose.

And she was there, between one blink and the next, not that she had not been there, but that he had only now seen her. The braids and ribbons of her hair were drawn back from her face and caught up to a knot from which the ends hung free. She was clad mostly the same except that she had a cloak lined with fur hanging off her shoulders, and fur-lined short boots. What he saw first was that she opened her arms to him. He ran to her and she caught him up into a hug. “Merry met, Leaf my life.”

She held him up against her, her forehead against his. The dry summer grass scent of her was all around him. Harry’s breath caught in his throat, and he started sniffling.

“I trust my furs are not rank and those are tears of joy.” Summer shifted her stance so that she could look down into his face.

“It’s so good to see you again. I couldn’t, with my glasses on,” Harry admitted, blinking back tears. She’d told him the first time, ‘You will see me again, if you see me.’

“It is a gift to see more than one way. As for me, you named me Summer, and at the turn of the season I made my journey into the underworld and with the turn of the wheel I came forth. “ She ran her fingers along a twig and showed him the leaf bud forming there.

Harry felt rather like a tree ready to grow new leaves himself. “Is that why you called me Leaf?"

“Oh, at the questions you are again. Be careful what you ask, for you will get an answer. Leaf is a fine name for a child I found clinging to a tree, with the green eyes of my kin, all a-tremble at the cross winds. It is said the new leaf heralds the coming of summer. What more there is you should discover for yourself—see how well you have done already!”

She set him down on his feet. The cold struck up like knives for his trainers were leaky. Harry shifted uncomfortably, but more uncomfortable was his curiosity. Kin was a word he’d heard but wasn’t sure of.

“Cry mercy if you had but the feet of a hart.” Summer swept Harry up again and sat him on a branch. “Such shoes, laced up like a corset.” Her fingers plucked his shoelaces free and she tossed them over her arm. “Like Merlin himself run to rags, that besom.” Then she re-laced his right trainer in a new pattern though she didn’t complete it with a knot. “Can you do the other lace like as I did?”

He took the newly laced shoe off and looked on the inside as well as the outside. Then Harry set about lacing up his left trainer the same way. It took him a while to follow the same pattern. Then he tied the last knots and his feet felt pleasantly warm though his socks were still wet.

“It is the wish of my heart to ask you questions.”

It was his turn. Harry had a question; he needed the answer and feared it as well. He took a deep breath. “When you say kin do you mean you’re my family?”

“Kin may be many loves and lives and lands apart, years in the doing and undoing. Family is rooted in blood, but roots may lose purchase. You may live with your blood but they are not family. The blood of the old ones, that is mine also, is awakening in you.” Summer ran her hand slowly up the tree trunk. “I do not know if it is the sap or if it is a clinging vine. I cannot claim you as family, Leaf, but you are in my heart. There was a place in it bespoke for you from the beginning.”

He wriggled his warm, mushy toes and thought about the answer. Harry didn’t really understand with his head all Summer said, but what she said fit into place like a jigsaw puzzle piece he didn’t have a picture for.

Summer leaned on the tree with her cheek against the wood like it was a satin pillow. “What is that house, that those who enter it blind come out seeing?”

Harry had read up on riddles. It was best not to tackle them head on, but to try to think sideways. Was the house meant to be an actual building? Was it a hospital? But blindness was hard to fix, wasn’t it? To fit a riddle it ought to happen to everyone who went in the house. Maybe it wasn’t seeing with eyes, but how else do you see? “A school,“ he started to add ‘right?’ but caught himself before wasting a question. “Yes, a school.”

Summer tilted her head, a little smile curving her lips. Harry had the feeling she didn’t think much of his skipping school. It was his turn, and he needed to think. Did he ever think this hard in school? Summer brought him food, so he shouldn’t ask for more. She’d given him warm feet. And she was light and life, was magic, for him.

Magic. Like suddenly being on the school roof. Like his hair growing back after having been nearly shaved off.

“Why do weird things happen to me?”

Summer’s mouth quirked into a wicked smile. Sundogs glinted in her cloudy sky eyes. “What is weird is what you are, is your fate. It is coming for you, and that which happens foretells it. What you call weird are truths that others lie about. You will see and I will see you see. By your reckoning it will not be soon enough. Learn patience, Leaf. Fall from the tree and grow again and again. Time is like a mule, it would go slower an you would have it faster. Next we meet, bring me a poem out of the fire in your head.” She tossed him an apple and was gone, in the way she had of never having been there.

The apple was a little overripe, but Harry didn’t care about that. He ate it down to the core and then chewed on that until there was nothing he could suck dry. He went back to school and claimed his hat blew off in the wind and he chased it and got lost. That all he got was a note in his record for being tardy he counted a stroke of luck.

In his cupboard, he drew the pattern of his laces on pieces of paper. Harry didn’t want to forget it, ever. What he discovered was that it could make him warm. Soon he was spending snug nights in his cupboard. Summer kept feeding him every day he could get out long enough to look for the food. He didn’t see her. He didn’t have a poem yet. His head didn’t feel like there was a fire in it, but more of a fog. Or smoke. It was stuck in his head, like all the things Summer said to him.

Harry tried harder in school now. For Summer, he would put up with the Dursleys screaming when he got better grades than Dudley. It was hard to get worse ones. But he wasn’t doing it for the grades. Even if they marked him a cheat, he’d still have learnt and they couldn’t take that away. The teacher who’d given him the sandwich he hadn’t seen again after the Christmas holidays. The others seemed to believe in the stories of him being a cheater and a troublemaker. He didn’t care what they thought if Summer believed in him.


	3. Riddles in the Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry spends more time with Summer, trading riddles. He learns, though sometimes more from the answers he gives than the questions he asks.

  
_‘”Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us.”’ — William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

It took him until nearly the end of term to produce a poem. He waited out the the last day of school, waited out the Dursleys’ departure for their trip to the beach (leaving him in the care of Mrs. Figg and her cats). He waited until he’d printed it as clearly as he could, in pen, every word perfect. Then he went to find Summer in the wood.

A fire in the head  
Sounds like it hurts  
Smoke out the ears  
Soot on my shirts.

It's burning my thoughts  
I think that's okay  
It's keeping me warm  
I hope it will stay.

Summer loved it. She had a pastry waiting for him, like a basket stuffed with honey and strawberries. They sat high up in the tree and the leaves wrote green and gold letters on the breeze. While he ate, Summer read his poem out loud. She read it simply, she read it like a minister giving a speech, she read it with dramatic flair, she read it hanging upside and holding the tip of her tongue. Harry got bits of bark all over his hands from not falling out of a tree from laughing.

And then he just had to ask, “Are you a fairy, Summer?

Her body whipped up into a crouch so that now she looked at him through the golden ivy of her hair with her eyes glittering through it like distant lightning. “Banish misfortune, kinsman. Names are perilous. Those who are wise call our people the fair folk, or the gentry, or other such names. Rarely are we so tender as I am to you, my Leaf.” She sat back on her heels and gave a little tilt of her head that made most of the stray locks fall away from her face. “A riddle: what comes from both fire and water?”

Harry was frozen into place. He’d felt that Summer could be dangerous, but now he knew it in his gut. He’d been warned, after all, of answers. Summer’s grave expression told him to think on the riddle closely. She didn’t ask them without a purpose. He wasn’t expected to give up and say ‘I don’t know’ which anyone might say if they weren’t going to take it seriously. So what came from fire? Smoke, soot. Warmth, cooked food, burns? Hot water could burn. He opened his mouth to speak—no, this needed more. What came from water? Fish, waves, rivers, rain… “Clouds.”

Now that it was his turn for a question, he wasn’t sure what to ask. And asking a good question was necessary. Otherwise he was treating Summer lightly: she who had fed him and given him the affection he hungered for even more. Asking her why she did these things would be rude, he could feel that. Maybe it was just because she wanted to. If he asked if she would ever go away and not come back, he felt she was quite capable of going away and not coming back. She wanted him to think for himself, not whinge and beg like a brat. 

Did Summer leave him on the Dursleys’ doorstep? He almost asked, then reconsidered. If the answer was no, he wouldn’t learn anything. If it was yes, he didn’t want to know. Harry knew that he had been left with the Dursleys because Aunt Petunia was his mother’s sister. But that’s not how things were done. He’d heard in school about children being adopted or fostered. They didn’t get left on the doorstep with the morning paper. There was government and police and doctors. Hadn’t there been at least a note? Not that Aunt Petunia would tell him anything.

That didn’t mean she knew nothing.

If Harry asked ‘who’ did it, he might run into the ‘names are perilous’ warning.

“Why was I left on the doorstep instead of police and social workers handling it like they do for other children?”

Summer looked at him searchingly. Before she answered, she dropped to the next lower branch and stood straight on it, her hand resting on the upper branch as if holding a spear. “In an ancient tale, there was forged a chain from the footstep of a cat, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. This was not like unto any chain wrought of metal or rope cut of hide or twined of hemp. It was all the stronger for being made of things unseen and unheard. You are bound, my Leaf, with chains fastened to your mother’s blood. And those who forged the chains and set them in place are of many intents. You may sing in your chains like the sea; the sea eats the land one wave at a time.”

It was a day as cloudy as her eyes. The wind that stirred the branches held the promise of rain. Harry slid down closer to the trunk of the tree.

“O Leaf, what is the difference between a secret and a mystery?”

That it was a riddle did not surprise him, and surely an easy riddle would be followed by a harder riddle. This question was like a cloud with a mountain inside. It was getting closer to dinner time and if he wasn’t home to make it…

What if he wasn’t? Why shouldn’t he just run away? He could go to another city and lie about his name and get put into a group home or something. And the weird would happen there too, and he didn’t know why it happened or how to make it happen or not happen. That was mysterious, at least to him, but someone knew. Like Aunt Petunia, with her hateful gaze. Running away wouldn’t get him answers.

“You can tell someone a secret and it’s still a secret if only two know. But if you figure out a mystery, it isn’t a mystery any more. You just know.” A drop of rain hit his hand, but it was only drizzling a bit. Hardly raining at all. His answer sat heavy on his tongue. Summer was mysterious. He liked that about her. He could enjoy how she kept being not like anyone else he could imagine knowing. But Harry was mysterious too, stuck inside a cloud and not knowing how big it was or what made it. Thinking back, she had told him at the beginning that she wasn’t going to explain Harry to himself.

Summer turned her face up and caught a raindrop on her tongue.

“I’m so glad you found me.” Harry’s voice choked on that. “That you like me. No one else does.”

She smiled with her eyes. “Mine is a happy star.”

It was his turn, and he was keeping her in the rain with his thoughts all churned up and dinner time soon. “Summer, I’m having a hard time thinking what to ask next. Maybe because I’m all stuck figuring me out.”

“Let something get unstuck then, and find its fortune.”

Harry opened his mouth. This would be a good time to be weird. “Um… would you sing for me?”

Summer sang like a bird. Not like bird calls, but like a bird would sing human words with a human throat. It wasn’t in English but Harry hadn’t expected current pop music like Dudley listened to. It was only a few lines, but it had a simple structure that sounded familiar from old songs and rhymes he’d heard.

“Tell me, Leaflet, what speaks truth and tells lies but says nothing?”

Harry turned the riddle over in his mind. Saying nothing is being quiet. Being quiet and not saying the truth is a kind of lie, but could not speaking a lie be truth? He toyed with his glasses where he’d tucked them in his shirt pocket. His vision was always clear when he was with Summer. He was scared if he looked through the glasses at Summer she wouldn’t be there, not then and never again. She’d said it was a gift to have two ways of seeing things. He might be only eight going on nine but he could see what that had to do with riddles and poems. The words meant more than one thing at a time. Oh.

“Words. Because they don’t come out of nowhere, someone said or wrote them.”

“O brave new Leaf, that has such worlds in it!” Summer dropped backwards off the branch, spun around it laughing, then changed angles and twirled around the tree. And then, of course, she was gone. Harry ran all the way back to 4 Privet Drive. Aunt Petunia complained about him smelling like a wet dog and sprayed him down with air freshener.

It was a good summer, that summer. Harry didn’t see Summer again, but any day he was out of the house he found food. He felt less hungry and slept better in his cupboard, though it had become tighter quarters in there with a welcome growth spurt. Petunia had been forced to pay for new shoes as his feet were so much narrower than Dudley’s that Harry walked out of the hand-me-downs no matter how tightly they were laced. He suspected weirdness, as did Aunt Petunia. Petunia refused to be seen shopping at Oxfam so she dropped him off with money and strict instructions to account for every penny. “And if you’re not done in an hour, you can walk home, since I won’t wait for you to dawdle about.” By dint of asking for help from the kindest looking employee, Harry was able to purchase trainers, socks, and underwear. He was tempted to walk home anyway, so he could stop at the library, but he didn’t want to run into Dudley and his gang who might take his new clothes if he was carrying shopping bags. Riding with Petunia and her needle tongue it would have to be; she complained about his being a clothes-horse the whole time, whatever that meant.

He’d taken the warming patterns down from his cupboard. He’d tried reversing the pattern, but he didn’t feel any cooler. Harry had kept his old trainers so he could study the pattern in the laces themselves. Was cold the reverse of hot or was there something else going on? There had never been anything in his science education that covered arranging your shoe laces to make your feet warm. Looking up magic in the school or public libraries was risky. Aunt Petunia had actually spoken with the staff in both places to brand him a thief and a trouble-maker and they kept an eye on him. She and Vernon were zealous about removing any mention of magic from their household. No TV shows with magical elements could be watched; no stage magicians or fairy stories were allowed. If the wireless was on, the word ‘magic’ in a song was enough to send Vernon or Petunia storming over to turn it off.

Obviously, magic had to be the best thing in the world and Harry wanted every bit he could have. Even stage magic like sleight of hand sounded dead useful. He imagined slipping tidbits of food from under Petunia’s beady gaze. Harry could be a professional magician if he could pull that off regularly. The thought of showing up in a top hat and a silk cape and telling the Dursleys he was off to make his name on the stage and he owed it all to them made him giggle: ‘I’m dedicating tonight’s show to my dear old aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley of 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey! I couldn’t have done this without you. Now, let’s make magic happen!’

Over the next two years, Harry’s life moved along as it had the last year. When Summer farewelled him in September, clad in a grey hooded cloak and carrying a staff, he gave her a parting gift of six rose hips. She gave him a span of leather cord, wrapped around a pine cone. He used it to replace his shoelaces, and his steps were swift and light as well as warm. The remainder he painstakingly cut into smaller strips and made into a bracelet he wore tied on his left forearm, well above the wrist so he could hide it under a sleeve. As he hoped, it made his left hand as deft as his right. He could write left-handed, but it looked like a different person’s writing which made him cautious about using it.

Outwardly, Harry Potter was still stuck with the role of that useless brat the Dursleys were burdened with: a liar and a thief, a troublemaker and a bully. Inwardly, all he did was pay attention, and it was paid with as much as he could bear. Otherwise he didn’t do anything different. He didn’t apologise more or work harder or duck faster or eat less. Petunia was the one who gnawed the bones of secrets. Everything she didn’t tell him was her power over him. Even her eyes had teeth. His listening itched her skin, that was all, she was red eyes and he a pollen grain, too tiny to see but spiky enough to feel. He was the cancer in her bones. He was nothing Dudley was and she made sure of that every day.

Usually he was silent while serving dinner unless responding to an order or question. The next evening, as he cleaned plates off the table, he saw Dudley trying to wedge an entire pie slice into his mouth at once. “There’s more banoffee pie in the kitchen if you want it, Dudley,” said Harry. His cousin nodded enthusiastically, which made half-masticated dessert ooze out of the corners of his mouth. Harry brought him a slice even bigger than the first, with a clean fork and napkin. Harry could feel his aunt’s gaze razoring over his face in suspicion, but she wasn’t about to tell Dudley he couldn’t have more.

“Coffee, boy, and be quick about it,” Vernon barked. He licked his lips watching his son start on his second helping of pie but didn’t ask for his own. Perhaps his doctor had been at him about his weight.

It wasn’t a plan. He didn’t think about it in advance or expect any particular result. But each time he served a meal to the family, he gave Dudley a bigger portion of food than Vernon. When Petunia brought him three pork chops to cook, even though they were only minutely different in size he still, by arrangement of the food on the plate, made Dudley’s chop appear biggest.

Petunia fretted like a loose lid on a pan of boiling water. She didn’t know why she didn’t like what he was doing, but she knew she didn’t like it. Harry’s food ration got even scantier. Working in the garden that hot July, he often felt faint from the combination of sun and starvation. And not as often as he could have hoped, he would find a clump of linden blossoms, or a mouthful of wild berries still fragrant from the sun. On the morning of 23d July, he found a print in the garden soil of a single slender bare foot. The second toe was a little longer than the big toe, which was hardly wider than the other toes at all. He traced the print once and unearthed the stone with a hole, tied on a bit of blue thread. A little breeze winded through his hair. 

Harry’s expectations had been whetted, but the owls and the letters were still a surprise. Destiny was coming for him and he knew all the Dursleys’ efforts to stop it would fail and Petunia would give up something out of her trove of secrets. He sewed the hole stone to the inside of his right trainer. The faint press of it at each step sent light gliding along his bones.


	4. A Fish Dinner in Diagon Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry meets Hagrid and steps back into the Wizarding World. The questions are getting harder and the shadows are getting deeper.

  
_‘There are times when the worlds are so near together that it seems as if our earthly chattels were no more than the shadows of things beyond.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

It was a dark and stormy night, on a rocky, wave-tossed island, in a tiny shack. At the stroke of midnight, Destiny broke down the door and told Harry Potter he was a wizard. Destiny, a giant of a man named Hagrid, gave Dudley a pig’s tail, Vernon and Petunia a piece of his mind, and put Harry in a boat to go back to the mainland.

Apparently he was a wizard now, or had always been a wizard. Much better than being a stage magician!

Neither of them concerned themselves with how the Dursleys would get off the island. Harry left the management of the boat to Hagrid and looked about him at the morning. A seabird flew down out of the sky and skimmed the waves with barely a flicker of its rich brown wings while its white belly shone on the water. Then it dove, a swift arc under the water and up again, with something shining in its beak. The beating of its wings as it rose scattered drops of water in the air like crystals. It headed right for the boat, flying between Harry and Hagrid. In it’s passage, it dropped a tiny silver fish in his lap, not longer than a needle and not much wider. Harry could have sworn the bird winked; without a second thought he popped the tiny fish in his mouth and swallowed it whole.

“That was a shearwater. ‘S called that because it flies close on the water to hunt fish. You don’t often get so lucky as to see a wild bird up close.” Hagrid grinned at him through his bearish beard. “I’m the gamekeeper at Hogwarts, but there’s no hunts. I keep an eye out on the creatures on the grounds and the forest and tend them at need. Magical creatures, a lot of ‘em. They’re no end of interestin’. Got a giant squid in the lake. Sometimes he waves his tentacles above water.”

Hagrid himself was something of a creature. There was something magical about him, but maybe it was because he was a wizard. Harry could see it as if it was an extra shadow cast by something that was not light. Perhaps by magic itself.

Their trip by train to London was almost ordinary. People would come in the carriage, take in Hagrid’s size and keeping going. Hagrid himself was simply having a nap, with an occasional epic snore that never quite woke him up. The train made Harry sleepy too. The countryside had given way to a more urban landscape and the novelty of train travel wore off quickly. Besides Hagrid, the only interesting thing was his umbrella. It was casting a not-shadow too: a slender dark line. As curious as Harry was, he didn’t want to mess with something that could give him a pig’s tail.

The Leaky Cauldron unnerved Harry. Not because it was the first pub he’d ever been in. No, it was how people took one look at him and knew his name. They shook his hand, they wanted his autograph. As politely as he could, Harry retreated into Hagrid’s generous shadow while the barkeeper shooed people away. It was like they lost sight of him. One man in a purple turban turned his head back and forth, seeking. Harry stayed on the far side of Hagrid from him. It was more than hiding behind cover. He was less there than he had been before he stepped into the shadow. It gave him a shivery feeling and his head ached. Despite the pain, he kept that way as he followed Hagrid out. 

The people of the wizarding world all seemed to want something from him—certainly, his attention, as if they’d never thought of ‘paying attention’ as more than a figure of speech. Their eyes grabbed at him as much as their hands. Harry arched his foot against the holey stone in his trainer and kept himself as a breeze that moved through light and shadow uncaught. But once he and Hagrid were on the move through Diagon Alley, Harry had time to examine his surroundings and see the magic surging all around him. Once out of sight of Muggles, the wizarding world openly displayed its power in the shape of its buildings and the art of its signage. Proportions, symbols, colours, materials, all affected the movement of magic in objects and beings. Harry wondered if anyone else could see what the shearwater’s gift allowed him. He hoped there was someone who understood it all.

Gringotts was unique among the places Harry saw. Its magic was heavily bound into restrained, finicky weaves that looked like any disturbance of an element could upset the lot of them, if one could pick out a piece from that labyrinthine construct. But the vaults were different - spaces contained within the weave but not connected to it save at the doors. His vault, though excitingly laden with treasure, was dusty with dead promises. Harry was relieved to have some money for his own and let his deft hands bring more galleons into his pocket than Hagrid suggested. He gladly left the vault behind. The object in vault 713 was a different matter entirely. Even under its wrappings it was a sun that shone inside out—less his thought than a response he did not understand. He put the memory away for later.

The clothing shop was an unexpected pleasure. Harry had grown up hearing Aunt Petunia grumbling about shopping and the ridiculous cost of clothes and how hard it was to find anything decent to wear. He had the same problem; though Dudley’s castoffs were free, acting grateful for rags was not possible. Harry thought he’d given up caring about his appearance, but the sight of the boy with the sleek blond hair and the perfectly fitted fine clothes made Harry glad that the first thing done was to cover him with a long robe. Harry shuffled his feet just a little on the stool, stepping on a barely seen shadow and pulling it around himself. He felt dimmer; felt easy in letting the other boy babble and assume Harry’s answers as he had a tendency to do anyway. 

Under cover of this babble, Harry quietly arranged for the purchase of some new clothes to wear under the robes. He didn’t put any of them on. He didn’t trust his friendly shadow to cover him from Aunt Petunia’s suspicion. Throughout his shopping trip, careful to avoid Hagrid’s observation by distracting him with questions, Harry acquired a few more things. When they went to buy his school trunk, Harry followed his instinct to the back of the store and selected a used trunk that had some damaged decorative inlay. “It has character,” Harry said cheerfully, and tucked his purchases into its unexpectedly capacious interior. He liked something about the feel of it, and hoped he’d figure out why later. Would the fish-gifted sight last? It had been such a little fish. Harry had been wearing his glasses at the end of his nose for hours now, and hadn’t so much as squinted.

The wand shop made Harry slam the glasses up his nose again. Like minding a frying pan full of bacon, there was always a spatter ready to fly out. Once he’d had a look at Ollivander with his glasses, he wasn’t sure he’d want to see the creepy old man without them. Still, Harry cocked his head trying to peek at each wand out of the corner of his eye. He had a feeling that Ollivander was catching him at it, too. The last wand Ollivander brought reached out to him right away and Harry reached back. It fit into the clasp of his hand so that the light under his skin sprang up and out. Wands popped out of their boxes and rolled away, the windows shattered. Hagrid’s hair all stood straight on end, including his beard.

Mr. Ollivander stood back up from where he had ducked down behind the counter. “How very curious,” he muttered, his hands straying over the wand boxes. “Ah, yes, that will be seven galleons.” His eyes were rapidly blinking as he took the coins; he didn’t seem quite recovered from the uproar but Hagrid didn’t want to stick around. He took Harry back out into the sunshine and off to eat before sending him back to the Dursleys. Apparently they had been retrieved from the island and sent home. Harry would have gladly traded 4 Privet Drive for the island even if the former had lacked Dursleys. The sound of the sea had been restful to his ears.

The Dursleys couldn’t wipe references to magic from the entire world. Harry had noticed that he was like Cinderella, with Summer as his don’t-say-fairy godmother. That was what his life was like now, for now, until the clouds parted and the secrets were shared.

  
Friendly shadows were everywhere to tuck around Harry and keep him out of sight and thought of his relatives. They certainly saw him, but paid little attention. He was disappointed that he couldn’t find any such spell in the Grade 1 spell book. Nor did the magical theory book help; Harry wondered if he’d grown up knowing he was a wizard if he would already understand some of this. He smuggled that book and the herbology book out to Summer’s tree, half-believing she wouldn’t be there. He had been hiding behind his glasses because they seemed to shield him from the Dursleys’ attention. He still cooked and cleaned because he was afraid if one of them fell into the empty space he left, that he would be uncovered. Besides, it made it easier for him to eat. Harry also tended the garden, because he didn’t want his work in it to be spoilt.

“Ascend to Summer in the tree, my figured Leaf!” An acorn brown hand reached down and pulled him up before Harry realised he’d taken it and found himself sitting beside Summer on one of the lower branches. She tapped his nose. “Your light dazzles the eyes now. Not all deserve to see it; you do well to make friends with the shadows.”

Harry offered up the two books, his tongue feeling at the words. “I’ve been reading these. There’s so much I don’t know, that the little I learn the more I know there’s more I don’t know.”

“’He who knows not, and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him.’” Summer browsed through the books, leaving an space` for Harry to speak. He had to remember again to choose his words, to think past impulse and listen to the side, just as he had looked past his glasses. Those, he took off and tucked in his pocket. It was good to look at Summer, at the shimmer silk of her hair and the gleam of her tawny skin. The non-light and the non-shadows it cast flowed through her like the tree she sat in; they connected high and low and wove around her and through her in layers that he could not trace. The appearance of her was the manifestation of all that dance, to the leather and feathers and bits of metal and cloth she wore.

“I’m not sure I like my wand.” Harry listened to his own unexpected words, startled at them. It had felt good, the wand.

“Does the cask of wine like the tap?” Summer leaned back against the trunk of the tree with the book on magical theory in the crook of her elbow. One leg dangled; one knee was behind Harry, supporting him in his perch.

Harry didn’t like this metaphor. Wasn’t he more than a vessel for magic? Was his magic just something that could run out and leave him empty? Was the wand doing more than controlling the flow of magic out of him and was that always in his best interest? Had he let someone install a lock in him? All questions to keep in mind, but he didn’t think Summer was the one to ask them of.

“I guess it could either resent it or appreciate it. If all you’re going to be is a container, things are going to get put in you and taken out. It’s your nature.”

“There’s an advantage to a dog to wear a collar, or a horse a bridle. Freedom has a cost. Servitude, a price.” She snapped her fingers against a bare stretch of skin above one knee.

“Do you use a wand?”

“An I would, I would lift my hand to a tree and take a branch, an it would.” She slouched regally back against the trunk and slowly blinked at him. “How can you dance and not know it?”

Her eyes, grey as rain in the sunshine, held his. Autumn was coming. He could hold onto the wind easier than he could hold onto summer. What did he know about dancing? Harry knew plenty about not knowing things. He let an answer grow heavy in his mouth, tasting the shape of it. Summer didn’t ask chicken-crossing-the-road riddles. She didn’t ask logic puzzles, or the kind where the answer was about how many R’s are there in ‘that’. 

“It’s a mystery to me.” That was his answer, and it left the empty space that was his to fill, the noughts-and-crosses of their game. It was normal that the first questions that came to mind proved unworthy. Any question that could be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ he had a chance of figuring out himself. Asking for names was right out. Summer didn’t do trade in his secrets, if she knew them. She was teaching him skills of thinking and doing. For want of a better question, he tried, “Have you ever been to Hogwarts?”

“I have been to the raised place of the cut ones. At the crossroads they laid stone on stone on stone and covered it all with turfs. They brought the golden boughs and suspended them between earth and sky. They sang under the stars until the moon rose and they drew it down.” Summer spread the book on her thigh and the wind ruffled its leaves. “Will you ask the wind what is in the book?”

Harry’s throat tightened and his eyes stung while resentments broke about inside him like window glass. He was just a kid… Harry remembered seeing a cat carry a kitten, the limp body dangling from the needle-toothed mouth. Is that what he wanted? Harry sniffled a little, rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and felt the scar. That kind of care was for children with parents who loved them.

Summer didn’t want to tell him things; she taught him things—if he could figure them out on his own. That way there were no lies; only his ability to understand. A truth misunderstood might as well be a lie. Understanding, how to get that was a proper mystery. Harry’s head felt stuffed full of mystery. Soon and too soon, he would go away to Hogwarts, where his parents had been before him; where they started making the choices that led to his birth and their deaths. He would go there, and waiting for him would be people who thought they knew him and people who had made decisions for him without giving him explanation or guidance. 

A finger tip slid across his cheekbone. “Your eyes are raining.”

He sniffled again. “It rains on everyone, not just me.” Harry met her eyes again. “Are there skies in my eyes like there are in yours?” 

“All the green of the wide world is in your eyes, Leaflet.” Summer flicked her fingers against his nose, and in the time it took him to say, ‘ow’, she was gone.

That night, he washed his face before going to bed, and paused a moment to look into the mirror. His eyes were indeed very green, as far as a mirror could be trusted. But had she said, ‘of the wide world’ or ‘of the wild world’?


	5. It's Full Of Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry goes to Hogwarts. That is what happens, in simple. Of course, being born is simple -- do not thousands do it every day? It is like falling asleep and dreaming, like dreaming and waking up. He goes to a new world; he becomes a new world.

  
  
_‘His chosen comrades thought at school_  
 _He must grow a famous man’ — William Butler Yeats ‘ What Then’_

  
Harry didn’t see Summer again before it was time to leave for school. September 1st came, and there he was at King’s Cross between platforms nine and ten. His ticket said nine and three-quarters, but there was no matching sign. This, was a mystery. Over the top of his glasses, he glanced slowly back and forth between nine and ten, and saw a kind of knot in the barrier. He pushed his cart forward and when it bumped against the barrier the knot tightened in front of it. “Here, none of that,” Harry said firmly, and pushed through, trying not to close his eyes as the knot became unfolded and refolded around him, leaving him standing in front of a scarlet train. 

A hubbub of people moved along the platform. They all appeared to know just where they were, what they were doing, and who they were. With all this to observe, he found an empty compartment on the train and settled into it. Shadows slid up to him, offering the quiet of their obscurity. He could wrap himself up. It had worked with wizards before. But Harry was here to be with other wizards, wasn’t he? He resisted the temptation to hide. Besides, he had everything to learn, including things he might later wish he didn’t know.

So when the red-haired boy asked to join him, Harry smiled, feeling out of practice. “Sure, plenty of room. I’m Harry Potter, what’s your name?”

The boy’s eyes widened cartoonishly, and he leaned forward staring at Harry’s face. Obligingly, Harry flipped up his hair to show the scar. He was definitely keeping a long shaggy do if this was going to keep happening.

“Cor, me just sitting down with Harry Potter out of nowhere! When I was eating my breakfast bacon I never thought of that happening.” He dropped back against his seat back and stared at Harry with his mouth so agape that Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to see the bacon.

“I’ve got to sit somewhere. What’s your name?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s Ron, Ronald Weasley. Ron. Brilliant!”

The door slammed open and two tall red-haired twin boys, plainly more Weasleys, leaned in. “Hey, Ron, Lee Jordan has a tarantula, want to see?”

“No, I don’t!”

“Or, you, um?” They turned their sharp eyes on him, but Harry didn’t answer because he was too busy at looking how the magic kept passing back and forth between them.

“He doesn’t either,” said Ron firmly, and closed the door on them.

“Tha—” started Harry, the T word approaching his lips. He swallowed it with a cough. “I appreciate that. It’s weird being famous for something I can’t remember and didn’t know anything about until a month ago. I didn’t even know I was a wizard, or that that was a thing.”

“I just didn’t want to tell Fred and George because they’d tell everyone and I… it’s nice, being the only one who knows for a little bit. What did they do, raise you in an enchanted castle on an island?”

“Is that a thing that happens? No, my mother’s sister’s family. I could have done with an enchanted castle on an island. I like islands. They’re so between.”

Ron giggled. “Do you know anything about Hogwarts? You’ll get a castle, you’ll just have to share.”

Harry smiled. “Everything is new. I feel lost, but I’ve been looking forward to school ever since I learnt about it.” He found Ron more than willing to share stories, many of which concerned the daring pranks of his older twin brothers. When the snack cart came around, Harry was glad to share. Ron had the gift of being able to talk and eat at the same time. Harry took a moment to appreciate how living with Dudley let him ignore mouthfuls of half-masticated food. But a few pumpkin pasties later, he stealthily acquired one of Ron’s scorned corned beef sandwiches and wolfed it down. The sweets were cloying his tongue an he wondered how Ron could eat like that and not be Dudley-sized.

Harry enjoyed mingling with the crowd of first years as just another student. He kept himself in Ron’s shadow as Hagrid herded them into the boats. His were just two more eyes feasting on the great castle looming above them, shining light out onto their darkness, onto their faces upturned like mirrors. Diagon Alley paled beside what he saw now, what he yanked off his glasses to see and nearly lost them over the side of the boat. 

Rooted in sky and earth and water, the castle’s magic was more like Summer’s, an intricate construct, but anchored in place. He feasted on the sense of it, following along with the others because he was a part of their flow joining the greater whole. Harry did not come back to himself until his name was called. It rang in his ears, trembled with the hissing of dozens of repeating voices. Was this destiny literally calling? He hadn’t paid any attention to what had been going on around him, but the way was clear. He walked to the grey-haired witch, sat in the seat, and let the Hat settle upon his head.

“Hmm, I wasn’t expecting you to be quite like this. This will take some puzzling out.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to talk to me. What do you do when you aren’t sorting? Do you get bored or lonely?”

“I reside in the headmaster’s office. Perhaps you will see me there one day. Now, Hufflepuff won’t do. You like your secrets. The same for Gryffindor, you don’t lack courage but that’s not where your strengths lie. You could do well in Ravenclaw or Slytherin…”

“I hope I’m not causing you any trouble. I didn’t realise there could be a question about it. If it helps, I need to be good at figuring things out and thinking for myself.” 

“Very well then. I’ll put you in RAVENCLAW!”

The Hat came up and showed Harry the cheering room, with one long table of students waving to him. “Thank you,” he said to the Hat and the witch, and scampered off feeling like he was chased by spotlights. He slid into the place at the table that opened for him and gingerly shook multiple hands thrust at him. The sorting went on while Harry was having a bunch of names thrown at him and trying to retain some of them. To his right was a boy whose shoulder topped his own, and offered the happily recognisable name, ‘Kevin Entwhistle,’ while also not seeming to know Harry’s name. “What are you famous for, then?” he asked. Half the table tried to answer at once.

A few minutes later, ‘Turpin, Lisa’, took the seat on Harry’s left. She was even taller than Kevin and Harry felt comfortably shrunken between their looming silhouettes. His train companion was one of the last sorted, and went to Gryffindor as expected. His twin brothers pounced on him and Ron gave Harry a helpless shrug (but looked happy all the same).

The white-bearded wizard at the head table made a brief speech, which Harry spent looking straight up at the ceiling, or rather, the sky. The table filled up with food but he had to be nudged into action. His neck cracked as he dropped his chin. Dudley Dursley’s fondest dream had materialised as veritable mountains of food. Right in front of him was a fresh-baked loaf of bread. Harry took the end-piece and gave it a smear of soft golden butter. When the first bites hit his stomach, it demanded his attention to eating and he was able to look about at his company. After the first burst of questions, his house-mates appeared to not be sure what to say to him. They were looking at him, though, little bright glances that inevitably drifted to his forehead. Kevin Entwhistle was not such a one. He chatted with a boy to his right, and occasionally passed Harry a platter with a, “Try this, it’s brilliant,” or some such remark.

To his left, Lisa Turpin was considering him with light blue eyes under level brows that were surprisingly dark compared to her blonde hair. Strong bones were emerging from her child’s face, like an eaglet growing into its adult plumage. “Try a sprout. They’re roasted instead of boiled so they’re not slimy. My mum said to always eat a vegetable serving. It’s brain food. They are like little heads, aren’t they?” She flipped one over with her fork to show the browned layered underside of the sliced sprout. Her voice had a considered tone as if she were carefully feeling how to pronounce each word.

Harry took a sprout and tried it. He’d eaten boiled sprouts because any food was better than none, but this was a different experience. It had a smoky-sweet taste and the layers crunched crisply between his teeth. “I appreciate the suggestion,” he said. “Hi, I’m Harry. Lisa Turpin, right?”

“That’s right. It’s nice to meet you. Eat up. My dad said the food is always good but they put on an extra effort for feasts like tonight.” And she turned her attention to the serious looking blond boy sitting across from her. Harry could barely see him past the food as they were both short. They started talking about astronomy classes and Harry couldn’t stop himself from looking up again. It was a clear starry night over Hogwarts, with just a hint of mist.

After a few minutes Lisa elbowed him gently. “You need to be in the here and now. You’re missing dessert.”

“Aren’t the stars here and now? We’re the ones who come and go.”

“You can’t live by deep thoughts alone. Have a few spoonfuls of trifle.”

“It’s excellent,” said the blond boy. “And they’re nearly done eating at the head table so get it while it lasts.”

Harry spooned up some of the dessert and leaned back a little so he could see past Lisa’s robes to the front of the hall. He hadn’t had a good look at the staff before and his first thought was that Aunt Petunia would run in the opposite direction from such a weird crew. Just as he was thinking favourably about them, he crossed gazes with a tall teacher all dressed in black. His eyes were also black and as implacable as those of a snake about to strike. Harry ducked back into Lisa’s friendly shadow.

The food vanished and older, badge-wearing students urged them to their feet and out the door. Up and up they went, Harry practically stumbling over the stairs as he tried to look at everything at once. Finally Lisa kept her hand on his shoulder and Kevin occasionally reached back to hoist him up a step.

“You are going to be a high-maintenance friend, Potter,” Lisa complained unheatedly. “We’ll be here all school year to see things.”

“But only tonight is the first time,” Harry’s head swivelled around watching the portraits move.

“I can’t even think about it. It’s too weird but the food was good and I hope the beds are soft because I’m going to face plant,” Kevin said half over his shoulder. “I’ll take it all in at my own pace.”

“That’s sensible. Now, Potter here is the dreamer type, and we must take that into account.”

“Oh, right. Hey, Potter, this is the first time you’ll ever go up these stairs. But not the last!”

Kevin was right. There were a lot of stairs for working off those big suppers. They all ended up before a stately door with a bronze knocker in the shape of the eagle. The prefect explained about using a riddle to get in and Harry was instantly sure he was in the right house.

Entering the common room, Harry magnetised to a window and stared out on the vista, cupping his hands around his eyes to stop the reflections from the light in the room. The prefects herded up the first years to give them the house rules then escorted them to their dorm rooms. “The custom in Ravenclaw is for the first years to get the room that was vacated by last year’s graduates. You will be assigned this room for all your years in Hogwarts, so treat it well. It’s also tradition for the outgoing students to leave a gift in the form of a puzzle, so good luck.”

The room was airy, with the outer wall being a semi-circle with seven windows. The five beds were laid out in a star formation with one end in the middle, with the other ends pointing one towards the back and the other four forward to the windows. The blond boy authoritatively claimed the back one; Harry chose one of the forward points. From the centre of the ceiling hung a circular arrangement of gauzy blue curtains that became more opaque towards the floor and spread out to give the head of the beds some privacy from neighbours but letting light pass through above. 

The headboards were stylised eagles, with reading lights in the eyes and the wings curving out giving more shelter at the head of the bed. At the foot of the beds were interestingly folded cupboards. He opened the doors on his cupboard and it unfolded into a desk and chair with a small set of shelves. The desk had an odd device on it, a cylinder with a rod through it. It would hold a roll of something. The side doors of the cupboard were closets, one with a rod for clothes hangers and the other with shelves and little hooks. His trunk appeared against the wall behind him, between the windows.

A stocky dark haired boy called out from the back of the room, “I found the puzzle!”

Harry and the others all came to join him. On the wall was a frame with a picture of five eggs in a nest. It was done in tiles, but the bottom right corner was empty.

“Sliding puzzle,” Kevin said from over Harry’s shoulder. “But it’s not scrambled up.”

“Eggs!” said the first boy, and rapped each egg with with his knuckles. They broke open and colours spilt out of them and spread all over the picture, forming the image of a smirking teenager. Then the tiles scrambled faster than the eye could watch, leaving an empty hole at the centre.

“Clever,” said the blond. “If I recall correctly,” and his precise voice left no one in doubt that he believed his recollection correct, “You’re Michael Corner. I’m Anthony Goldstein.” He pivoted to the side a little and looked expectantly at the group.

Michael grinned. “Right you are. And he’s Terry Boot.” He nodded to a boy with tightly curling dark brown hair, skin like milky cocoa, and unusual eyes that were a mix of bright blue and dark brown. Harry stared at them in astonishment.

Terry seemed to be used to this. “Heterochromia,” he said helpfully. “Yes, I’m Terry. And you are Harry Potter. When he smiled his eyes and mouth seemed to take up all his face. It was a bright and friendly smile, too. His accent was educated English with its crisp edges polished by the trace of another accent that fell pleasantly on the ear.

“That’s what they call me,” Harry said lightly. “And this is Kevin Entwhistle. He’s the tall one.”

Kevin was using his inches to peer over Harry’s head. “Good job with the puzzle, Michael. It doesn’t look like it will be too hard to unscramble. You should get first crack at it. But, help me out, my family doesn’t have wizards except me. Why is Harry famous? I’d like to know what everyone else knows.”

As much as Harry wished Kevin hadn’t brought it up, he had to sympathise. Everyone was looking at him now. “My parents died when I was a baby and I should have died too. But since I don’t remember it I feel weird talking about it. I don’t know anything of it myself.”

The other boys looked uncomfortable except for the imperturbable Anthony Goldstein. “A wizard referred to as ‘You Know Who’ used the Killing Curse on his parents. But when he used it on Harry, he himself instead died. Harry was left with the scar on his forehead, and the title ‘The Boy Who Lived’.”

Harry couldn’t decide whether he was pleased or angry to have the story reduced to this calm recitation. He tried to clamp down on the surge of emotions.

Kevin looked horrified. “A killing curse? Do a lot of those get flung around nowadays?”

“’You Know Who’ had followers called Death Eaters. Some of them went to Azkaban, the wizarding prison, some of them claimed they were being controlled, and others went into hiding. It was a war, but it’s over.”

Kevin touched Harry on the shoulder. “Sorry for bringing it up, but it was itching at me something fierce.”

“Best to get it out of the way,” said Anthony, but he blushed when Harry gave him a cold glance. He agreed, in fact, but it wasn’t Anthony’s place to say it.

Harry changed the subject. “I think it’s fair that Michael gets first chance to solve the puzzle. I bet there will be more puzzles, because there were five eggs.”

“One per egg,” mused Michael. “That works for me. If I get stuck, someone else can have a go, and we’ll take turns.” He took a couple of steps back to look at the puzzle as a whole. The other boys started putting away their belongings and readying for bed. 

Once the excitement of exploring their dorm had died down, a big dinner and a long day sent them one by one into slumber. It was Harry who lingered longest awake, sitting by the window at the foot of his bed and gazing out into the night. He could see the reflection of the lights in the lake go out one by one, until only the moon path shone on its wind ruffled surface. Beyond it lay a forest that was all shadow and must be the Forbidden Forest. He hoped there were trees that weren’t Forbidden. Harry had to admit it looked like a place Summer would like. If she followed him here. If the equinox wasn’t coming, when she would make her descent and be lost to him for months. But autumn always came and Summer always left.

Leaf. He held the name inside him. It wasn’t that he was Leaf, it was that she called him Leaf, and no one else knew the name. He would have that inside him while everyone looked at ‘Harry Potter’, ‘The Boy Who Lived’.

At last Harry’s eyes grew so heavy that there was nothing to do but to crawl into bed. The soft pillow and comfortable mattress, the smoothness of the sheet and the warm duvet wrapped him up in dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gratefully receive all comments. When I reviewed this work before publishing any of it, I thought: there's a lot of world building I could trim. J.K. Rowling already did the hard work. But if I am to draw a Harry with an altered nature, I want to present the matrix out of which he arose so that it makes sense to others. I hope that I make it worthwhile by including elements that I will draw on again throughout the story. So if anything doesn't make sense, or is dull, or drags, or isn't British, let a poor author know, please.


	6. The Needle Pointed Zenith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry begins taking classes. Transfiguration fills him with ethical qualms and Herbology is full of Slytherins. And for some reason no one thought he needed to take the Magical Orientation class. He goes anyway. Merlin is real? He went to Hogwarts? Mind blown!

  
_‘ Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of some great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and why it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might claw or bite you in a way that would pout poison in you, and that would be the serpent’s tooth._   
_—William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

The sun tickled him awake. He opened his eyes, holding his hand to block the light from them and stared up at the ceiling. It was arched, with wood ribs dark with wax and age running up from the floor to meet in the centre. Between the ribs were panels in a soft medium blue. The floor was the same dark wood but by each bed was strip of blue and cream rug that was rather flattened from years of feet. Now that he saw it all in sunlight he could see that the furnishings were a little worn but not shabby. It had been lived in by generations of little boys before him and some day another boy would waken to the same sun shining in the same window over the same bed. Now he was part of it.

When Harry returned from a morning’s wash up, he found the other boys waking and on similar errands. He dressed in most of his uniform and left the tie and shoes until last. He unearthed his school supplies and put the books on his book shelf. With the books he found a package wrapped in butter soft leather and tied with fine but tough twine. He carefully undid the knot and unfolded the leather. It contained a long feather, silvery grey, and at the tip of the quill a bronze nib. In two pockets in the leather were pieces of grey stone. They were the same type of stone, but one seemed like only a rectangular lump, whereas the other… it was leaf-like in shape with a delicately worked surface from which flake after flake had been chipped out leaving the edges glass sharp. The use of the quill was immediately obvious, but he wasn’t sure what the stones were for. Harry folded the package and put it back in the trunk. He would try the quill later.

“Time for breakfast, gentlemen. Does anyone need help with their tie?”

Harry had Anthony show him the knot once. After that he was able to do it himself and they all went down to the Great Hall where a great quantity of breakfast awaited. Again they sat only at their house tables. Ron Weasley came over to meet Harry. “You settling in all right?”

“Yes, thanks. I like my room. How’s Gryffindor?”

“It’s brilliant! We were up half the night playing Exploding Snap. I’ll introduce you to my dorm mates when we’ve got a free period together, or at lunch if that comes first. All right?” Ron blinked a few times.

“Sure, why not?”

Yet another tall red haired boy, this one with a prefect badge, called Ron back. “Sit down, Ron, class schedules are about to be passed out.” Ron headed back to his table, where he and the other boys bent their heads together to talk. The tall boy must be Percy; Ron had gone on at length about their mother’s pride in him getting a badge.

Harry and his own dorm mates put their heads together over their schedules. Their first class was Transfiguration, to be followed by Charms and Herbology.

“Flying class tomorrow,” Terry Boot said happily.

“How can we fly? I thought first years couldn’t have brooms.” Kevin traced over to Tuesday afternoon. “We’re sharing with Hufflepuff.”

“There are school brooms for purposes of learning flying technique and safety.” Anthony was making little notes on his schedule.

Michael leaned over Anthony’s arm. “Oh, you’re plotting out where they are. Good idea.”

Harry frowned. “What is ‘Health & Activity’? We’ve got it before lunch today and first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Also, what is ‘Magical Orientation’?” asked Kevin. “It’s got a ‘biweekly’ notation, too.”

Everyone checked their schedules, but only Kevin had it listed. Anthony suggested, “Perhaps it is for Muggleborns, to help them learn about wizarding society? It seems good sense.”

“Does everyone realise we will need to go back to Ravenclaw Tower to get our books for the first classes? There’s rarely an excuse for being late. I shall certainly bring my books to meals so in the future I won’t waste any time climbing back up to the dorm.” Anthony laid his knife and fork on his plate and stood up, surveying them like a tiny blond Duke of Wellington. “Gentlemen, I will see you in class.”

Yes, Harry’s life was a smidge better because he wasn’t the shortest first year boy.

One panting trip up and one breathless trip down later, the boys found the Transfiguration classroom just in time. They walked in and took seats at the back. A tabby cat was sitting on the teacher’s desk. When the other students arrived and sat down, they started a little mild chatting across the rows with the Ravenclaw girls. Apparently they had a puzzle box in their dorm. Harry didn’t listen. There was something odd about the cat. He supposed it was a magic cat. He looked at it sidelong and it was looking back at him. Therefore Harry got the full effect as the cat transformed into the tall stern female teacher who had presided over the Sorting Hat. “Two points to Ravenclaw, Mr. Potter, for … vigilance.” She let the class get over their gasps of surprise then began lecturing.

Harry took notes and wondered if he was going to be able to get this magic thing after all. It sounded a lot more complicated than waving a wand. If Professor McGonagall could change into a cat and back, she obviously knew something about magic. And it was wizarding magic, not… gentry magic; he had no doubt that Summer was magic from the ends of her hair to the tips of her toes.

He contemplated the match he was given. He had to turn its matchness into needleness. He had the match before him, so first he thought about a needle: the point of it to pierce, the sleek length to slide through material, the narrow eye to hold the thread. Then he looked at the match. It had started living wood, and had been changed into something, forced to become a tool to consume its own substance. Maybe it would happier being a needle.

The first time he tried it nothing happened. Also the second, and the third and the… he lost count. Oh, look, that Gryffindor girl with the fluffy hair had done it. Harry rolled his wand between his fingers and felt for that weird connection. He read over his notes. Words were important for wizard magic, and he had to make that change in his mind before it would affect the match. One action, to connect past and future.

He cast. The match shrank, thinned, shone. The eye opened, the point glittered a tiny star.

Harry put his face down on the desk. He felt a little shaky.

“Mr. Potter, are you unwell?” The teacher touched his shoulder. “Ah, a needle.” She picked it up and examined it. Harry looked up at her. There was a slight frown on her face, or she was squinting. “Interesting. Well done, that’s three of you who’ve succeeded. 10 points to Ravenclaw; 5 points to Gryffindor.”

Harry sat up. “It’s kind of disturbing. Now I feel responsible for it. What do you do with them?”

“A good needle will always have a place it is needed, Mr. Potter. You may leave it in my care.” She poked it into a pin cushion and moved on to see how others were doing.

The Charms classroom was near the library. Once again, they were with the Gryffindor students, but all the Ravenclaw first years fell behind to have a look at the promised land laid out before them.

“I can hardly wait to get started researching that Transfiguration essay,” breathed Lisa Turpin.

“Class first, Turpin,” said a pretty dark haired girl pulling Lisa away from the door. Padma Patil, that was it, with the twin in Gryffindor, who was with them as well as the Gryffindor girl who had been the first to transfigure her match. She was among the last to leave the library door. Her steps bustled to catch up with the rest of them.

As they took their places in the classroom, Harry got his first good look at Professor Flitwick. Now that he was really paying attention to Flitwick he could see that the teacher wasn’t a human little person. What songs did his veins sing? Could he hear Harry’s veins? Every bit of brain in his skull paid attention to Flitwick’s lecture.

Make a feather float? It’s what they did! How easy! He swished and flicked and incanted with fervour. His feather shot straight up and stuck in the ceiling.

“A little more gently, next time. Try to think of it as something fragile, like a snowflake or a soap bubble—see if you can get it down on your own.” Flitwick moved across the room to where a Gryffindor girl and Ron were squabbling.

It’s a feather, not a needle, Harry. Snowflake. He could work with that. “Wingardium Leviosa,” he said again, moving his wand with the thought of a snowflake dropping slowly through the air. The feather stayed put. Again the feeling of attachment assailed him. Was he going to feel responsible for everything he affected magically? He’d never felt about his shoelaces like that, or his armlet.

Several minutes later, the feather was still solidly stuck in the ceiling. He stared up at it. How deep a hole had it made? Not all the way through that beam. Maybe if it had as many years as the river had worn a hole in the stone. He was the river, though, wasn’t he? And magic, the water.

“Harry, how did you get yours to do that?” Kevin muttered. “Mine just sort of jerks about.”

“Maybe it’s magic left over from the needle thing.”

“Sting like a bee, float like a butterfly,” Kevin muttered to himself and tried again.

The Irish boy set his feather on fire. The fluffy-head girl tried coaching Ron Weasley, who looked like he wished he could set her on fire. Once more, she’d been the first student to succeed. Her feather wafted about like it had filed a flight plan.

While the last few students were attempting to move their feathers, Flitwick took questions. Ron Weasley asked about his dueling career. Apparently Flitwick had been a champion of magic duels, and Harry loved trying to picture this small man taking out wizards more than twice his size.

At last Harry raised his hand to ask the question that had been on his mind. “Professor, both in this class and in Transfiguration, when I used my magic on something I felt.. I felt like I had been rude to it? To … to make it do what I wanted?” Everyone was looking at him. For once it wasn’t because he was famous, they were looking at him and he felt a little naked.

“Mr. Potter, I assure you that you are not the first wizard to think about the ethics of magic. I will find you a book that will be helpful for a student. Then we can discuss it more fruitfully when you and I have our first conference. This is something I do for all members of my House, in addition to my office hours for all students.”

After two classes, Harry’s head was so full of new ideas that he felt like his feet were towing it like a balloon as they walked into the Herbology greenhouses.

Then he ran into some needles.

“So that’s the great Harry Potter? Disappointing in person isn’t he? Scrawny, shabby, short.”

Harry recognised the voice, which only pretended to be too soft to be overheard. It was the blond boy from Madame Malkin’s shop.

The girl next to him sniffed, “It looks like the lightning bolt stood his hair permanently on end. Has he never heard of a comb?”

Ahah, this type of kid. “Oops!” said Harry with forced cheer, and ducked to get the thing he’d dropped that didn’t exist. He tugged a shadow around him on the way back up.

It worked well this time.

For him. Deflected from their preferred target, the Slytherins tried first Anthony, who ignored them with such calm disdain that they gave up. Then it was Kevin, who tried to ignore them but slowly started to turn red at the ears at the muttered words drifted over to him whenever Professor Sprout was out of hearing range. Jokes about mud and mudbloods, which Harry didn’t understand but could tell were meant as insults. He rearranged the shadows and stepped out of them.

“Excuse me. Um, blond kid. No, the pointy one.”

“I’m Draco Malfoy. Malfoy to you. Potter.” Draco smirked a mirror-honed smirk and glanced sideways at his peers to make sure they appreciated it. “What can I do for the Saviour of the Wizarding World?”

“That pot right there, no!” Harry made the flaily point of one who has pointed too late.

Draco turned to his right and his elbow hit a pot and knocked it off a table spilling soil all over the shoes of the Slytherin girl, who squealed in vexation.

There was a scattering of laughter. Harry simply projected his best failed helpfulness, keeping himself between Kevin and the Slytherins.

Professor Sprout bustled over and made sure no one was hurt. She turned the spill incident into instructions on how to handle a dropped plant. Her manner was kindly but she seemed to regard the plant with more warmth than any of the students. Harry appreciated this for his own part, as being surrounded with magical plants and told to care for them suited his recent ethical sensibility. The greenhouses were largely devoted to magical plants with the exception of a few medicinal herbs. Harry had thought himself an experienced gardener but his experience with Petunia’s phlox and hollyhocks was not going to help much with anything called a Puffapod. He thought he could really be good at this class, but he had ten potential problems and they were all wearing green striped ties. He could defend himself alone, but not the rest of the Ravenclaws.

When class was over and the students beginning to drift out in colour coordinated clumps, Harry hurried ahead of the other Ravenclaw boys and lightly tapped the Slytherin girl’s arm. “Excuse me, Miss?”

Six Slytherin students turned on him. Their surprise barely showed, as they settled bored and disdainful masks onto their faces. Curiosity leaked through the eye holes. “What do you want, Potter?” The girl glanced at his hair again, then down at his scar. She was one of the few first years shorter than him, with dark hair worn in bangs framing her dark brown eyes and extra pink mouth.

“I hope that pot didn’t fall on your foot. You aren’t hurt at all?”

She lifted her chin dismissively. “No, but it was close.” Holding out her hand, she said, “I’m Pansy Parkinson, Mr. Potter. I appreciate your concern.” Her eyes slid sideways towards Draco.

“My pleasure, Miss Parkinson.” Harry gave her hand a small, careful, unpractised shake. Now what did he do? But this was solved for him by the other Slytherins introducing themselves under Draco Malfoy’s turned up nose. Harry might be unimpressive in person but apparently the ‘boywholived’ glamour had power even here.

The Ravenclaws caught up and with superb composure, Anthony detached Harry from the Slytherins and bore him away. “Throwing yourself into the venomous tentacula patch, Harry?” he asked. 

“We’re going to have classes with them for seven years. I thought I could try being nice at the start and see if it helped.”

Kevin grumbled from behind them, “They’re not much for nice. What was all that about mud?”

Anthony sniffed, “There are certain wizards who call themselves pure bloods because they aren’t descended from Muggles. Perhaps they’ll talk about it at your Orientation class, Kevin. Or you can ask.”

They were glad to find that the Health classroom was near the Great Hall, so they could count on having a full hour for lunch. The class itself was almost exactly like other school lectures Harry had listened to in the past. Eat vegetables with every meal; don’t fill up on snacks; don’t overeat; don’t stay up too late studying but get to bed at a reasonable hour. The lecturer was the school medi-witch, Madame Pomfrey. She gave them all a questionnaire to fill out that they were to present when they had a proper examination.

Harry looked over the questions with dismay. He had no idea about any health issues his parents might have had. He certainly didn’t know the date of his last physical, assuming he’d ever had one. He was pretty sure he needed one; was pretty sure that there would be trouble because adults didn’t like having their assumptions questioned. He tucked the paper into his Charms textbook to worry about later.

Lunch was not as lavish as the Sorting feast, but Harry happily grazed on sandwiches. He made a deal with Kevin, Michael, and Terry to each choose a different sandwich, cut them into quarters, then share out the quarters. Anthony abstained. “It’s hard enough keeping kosher here,” he said, and Harry chose not to ask questions when he was already hungry.

His favourite sandwich surprised him — he’d had mutton before and not liked it much, but this was tender, with crispy fried edges and a seasoning he didn’t recognise. “Anyone want to swap their quarter of this for another of mine?”

“Not happening,” said Kevin. “A deal is a deal is a deal, and we must go through with it. If you want to swap next time we can agree on it.”

“I like the idea of negotiating. It’s a valuable skill to practice,” Terry Boot agreed. “But when the bargain has been made it should be kept.”

Michael just shook his head. “You can always look for another of those sandwiches — after you’ve eaten what’s on your plate, good or bad. I certainly am.” He eyed a platter of assorted sandwiches as he finished up his quarters.

Harry wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. Maybe he could eat two sandwiches. He certainly was allowed to. There certainly was enough food. Hogwarts must have an enormous kitchen and staff, or maybe they just whipped it up with magic? That was something to ask about in a class. Maybe he could make his own food over the summer.

“Hey, Kevin, do you mind if I come to Orientation with you? It’s not on my schedule, but I don’t have anything else. I was raised with Muggles even though my parents were wizards so I bet it would help me, too.”

“Yeah, you should have it on your schedule too. Come along with me and ask.”

Orientation was held outside on top of a turret. There were low benches set around the wall allowing beautiful views to be glimpsed through the stonework. “Save me a seat, Kevin,” Harry said, and approached the teacher. It was Dumbledore himself.

“Ah, young Harry, what a pleasant surprise. You wish to attend Orientation?” The Headmaster’s robe in all its tawdry glory made him look like a child’s toy right up to the twinkle in his eyes. But up close, when Harry had to meet his gaze, he felt his shadows fade away. “Yes, sir.”

“Of course you may. I will amend your schedule. I look forward to seeing you here—though I will not always be here myself.”

“I appreciate it, sir.”

“You’re welcome,” Dumbledore said, and paused, a tiny bit of a pause, barely a breath or blink, but it sent Harry scurrying to Kevin’s side.

“Welcome to orientation. You have been asked to attend because you were not raised in wizarding society. This is not a class, but time we spend together getting to know each other better. There will be opportunities to ask questions in this presentation, but forgive me if I answer some commonly asked questions in the beginning.” The Headmaster went on to explain his various titles, sprinkling in little jokes.

“Now, you and I will be spending years together, and we will have time to speak again. However, today we have a special guest: historian Perdita Legent, author of ‘Merlin: Man and Myth’.” He stepped back and took a seat, allowing a plump little witch to take the speaker’s position. She had long blonde hair that fell in corkscrew curls over one shoulder, and wore a dark purple robe that was short in front showing a white lacy dress underneath.

“Thank you, Headmaster. Hello, students. Am I right in assuming you all know the names Merlin and King Arthur? Has anyone not heard these names?” She paused a moment, but no one raised their hand. “It’s not surprising. They are known to the far corners of the world, though their tale has its true home here on the island of Great Britain. Muggles have written many books and poems about King Arthur. Consider these lines from the poet Tennyson: ‘And there I saw mage Merlin, whose vast wit and hundred winters are but as the hands of loyal vassals toiling for their liege.’ To one who does not know as you know now, that magic exists, this is beautiful poetry. But now you can recognise in these lines, that kinship we bear to Merlin. It is we who will have one hundred winters and more, should fortune spare us. It is we for whom magic may do the work of a hundred willing hands. For Merlin is both myth and man to us; wizards swear by Merlin every day. Though there was unquestionably a real Merlin, we cannot tell if he was also King Arthur’s Merlin. Nevertheless, he is hailed by many as the greatest wizard who ever lived. He studied here and was sorted into Slytherin House.”

Harry leaned back against the stone, eyes and ears wide, lightnings sizzling along his spine. This was his life now. He loved it. The life and deeds of Merlin, as Perdita Legent told them, were his history.

“Despite the fact that wizards have longer lives, history may still pass from our recollection. Even current events are subject to debate and one wizard’s truth is another witch’s delusion. So, I will finish with these words from Tennyson’s Merlin: ‘And here is truth; but an it please thee not, / Take thou the truth as thou hast told it me.’” She took a step back with a little bow, and her audience burst into applause, including a beaming Dumbledore.

She took questions then. The first was from a girl wanting to know if Lancelot and Guinevere were real as well. Harry didn’t care about that and let his attention wander to his surroundings. He stared up at the towers and battlements of Hogwarts looming above him. History was now, and him. Joy clawed at his insides, making more room.

Then they were done, and the golden autumn afternoon lay free between them and supper.

“I’d say it’s time to start in on essays, but my brain is blown right now,” said Kevin.

“Let’s go out,” Harry said, though it was less a suggestion and more, I’m doing this right now, as he hurried down the steps. Kevin pelted after him.

Harry wasn’t sure where he was in the castle but he knew where he was going. If he’d stopped to think, he would have stopped and there was no stopping him. He burst out into the sunshine and broke into a full run, unimpeded now by other students or frowning prefects. He ran down to the lake and up onto a small rocky outcropping overlooking it. Here he dropped to his belly, panting. A minute later, Kevin joined him and their heaving breaths gradually synchronised.

“Send you to m’dad… he’ll race you on the grass… make a champion sprinter.”

Harry tucked his glasses into his book bag and stared down into the water. It was murky. There could be a Lady in it. Harry was not overly familiar with the Matter of Britain, but he had absorbed the common phrases and tales. The woman’s hand rose from the bosoms of the water, clad in whatever samite was (sounded like clingfilm), holding up a magic sword. This absolutely looked like a lake where that could happen, as Summer looked like someone to be met in a tree.

“Took that exercise advice seriously, did you?” Kevin rolled onto his back and flung his hand over his eyes to shade them.

“Maybe Merlin stood on this rock and looked out over the water.”

Kevin stared up at the sky, blinking against the brightness. There were hardly any clouds in it. “It goes deep,” he said at last.

Turning to look at him, Harry rested his cheek against the stone. Its cragginess had been worn down by millennia of weather and centuries of feet but it was still rough. Kevin had a very straight nose, except for a little bump near the bridge. He wondered what his own nose looked like from the side. Mirrors aren’t good for looking at one’s own profile. “See anything up there?”

“Half the universe. You?”

His grin rubbed against the stone. “Just the bit that’s in front of me.”

Their infant philosophising was intruded on by a group of older students, girls come to study and chat. On the rock. As they did all the time last year, no matter how many firsties they had to sit on.

Harry and Kevin accepted their place in the pecking order and ceded the overlook. They wandered back towards the castle. Off to one side of it, they could see a flying class.

“This time tomorrow, that will be us,” Kevin said breathlessly.

Harry laughed, a cascade of giggles that swelled out of him like hiccups. 

They passed into the shadows of the castle. Harry let one cling to him.

“I think the others are in the library now. “ Kevin pulled out the class schedule and pondered it. “All the classes we had this morning, we have again Thursday morning, but in a different order. “There’s a lot of empty space on here, but if we’re going to have to write with quill pens, we’ll need the extra time. The prefects last night said something about penmanship lessons. We should look on the notice board in the common room.”

Never in his life had Harry cared about penmanship. Yet Summer hadn’t sent him a feather and a nib to go unused.

Once more of soon to be many once more times, they climbed Ravenclaw Tower. What more exercise did they need? They’d find out tomorrow morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a longer chapter than most. I try to keep them between 2500 - 3000 words. Magical Orientation is one of my changes to the Hogwarts curriculum. It is designed to give Muggleborns context for Wizarding culture. It is in story a recent innovation and is a series of lectures followed by a question and answer section.


	7. Inkblots and Elves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry finds out that House Elves exist and they do the Hogwarts housework. That explains so much and nothing at all.

  
_‘…two faeries, little creatures, one like a young man, one like a young woman, came to a farmer’s house, and spent the night sweeping the hearth and setting all tidy.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

  
One riddle later, Harry and Kevin reached the common room. Of the first year Ravenclaws, only Padma and Morag were visible. They were watching two older students play chess. Harry and Kevin drifted over to be sure from near what they’d seen from far. The pieces moved themselves, on direction by the players, and did battle that sent one or the other bashed and crumbling to the side.

“First time seeing wizard chess?” The discreet voice behind them sounded like he’d been trained at the BBC. They looked back to see an older boy, with blue eyes and light brown hair streaked blond by a summer outdoors. Nearly adult, He was taller than Kevin. “I’m Chambers, Adstan Chambers. Potter and Entwhistle, yes? Now, the pieces have a certain amount of awareness. See how that one is looking back at the player? You can’t hear it, but it is disagreeing about the move she wants to make. After all, it is the one who will get knocked off the board, so shouldn’t it get a say?” He chuckled, resting his hands lightly on their shoulders. “Do either of you play?”

“I’ve never,” said Harry; “Yes, but I lose all the time,” said Kevin.

Chambers smiled at Kevin. “But you keep playing, that’s the spirit. How are you boys settling in?”

“Bit like a dream still,” Kevin admitted. “We were about to check the board for penmanship lessons. I’ve never used a quill.”

Harry didn’t much care for Chambers. The hand on his shoulder did not grip, but it felt a little like being pushed down on.

“I can give you some tips right now if you like. Perhaps you haven’t noticed this writing station over here?” Without pausing for a possible objection, he led them to a cupboard with a supply of quills, ink pots, and a short stack of parchment. “This is for anyone’s use, but you must remember: anything you try to take from the common room will go right back here, including the ink. People use these supplies to make quick notes, then copy them to their own parchment with their own ink and quill. Or they can be used to write down notices for the board, or for casual sketching or to track game scores. As long as you use them right here, you can use them all you like.” He chuckled again. “And yes, people do forget and lose their notes.” He raised his voice for this. Another older student, his nose in a book, said equably, “Sod off, Chambers.”

“Now, for the sake of your grades, remember that all the teachers like to see good handwriting. Think of all the blobby essays they have to look over. You will always get a worse grade for poor penmanship.” He sat them down at a table and gave meticulous instructions on how to hold the quill, how far to dip it, and at what angle to hold it. He tut-tutted at the inferior nibs and the shabby feathers. “The Headmaster has a red feather that is supposed to have come from a phoenix. Professor Flitwick likes pheasant feathers. The commonly available feathers are from turkeys and geese. I fancy guinea fowl, myself. Why don’t you spend a while practising your signatures? I’ll come back and check on you; must do a bit of revising.” He smiled, waited for their polite agreement to his plan, then sauntered to a seat and picked up a waiting book.

Kevin wrote, ‘bit of an arse’ and nudged Harry. Harry smirked and nudged back. He didn’t appreciate the sensation of being gently and firmly pushed into a debt. That Kevin felt it too only cemented his quality in Harry’s eyes. If this was friendship, he was for it.

A chime sounded signifying the nearness of supper. The clock was not enough to rouse a Ravenclaw pursuing knowledge. Harry rubbed his tired hand. He was beginning to get a feel for the pen, you had to be gentle and not rush. His pen swoops got a little too arty, he hated stopping a good swoop. Kevin kept using too much pressure and dug little holes into the parchment. They murmured their appreciation to Chambers. Harry tried not to wince when Kevin said, ‘Thanks.’ Everyone else was going to use the word, after all.

Chambers placed a brown velvet bookmark and closed his book. “My pleasure. You boys should have a bit of a wash before coming to the table. You’re all inky,” he said with a toothy smile.

They were; they did.

The other Ravenclaws were at the table already. Terry had an ink blot on his cheek that no one was telling him about.

“So are you two all orientated now?” wondered Michael.

“Who knew Merlin was real? All of you not Muggle-raised, that’s who. My world view was rocked. So short answer, yes.”

Padma leaned in to the conversation. “I heard that Granger girl from Gryffindor got into it with Perdita Legent about dates.”

“Yeah,” said Kevin, “She went spare. Disorientated.”

Harry had obviously been in another world during this. A better one.

Morag shook her head. “If she wants to argue history she needs to do research into it herself, not come in and expect it all to be laid out to her satisfaction. Legent had to dig for years, judging by the length of her bibliography. Pass the pumpkin juice, I’m that parched.”

Some houses might socialise after supper. In the Ravenclaw common room, post-supper was obviously the time to get a little light reading in to warm up for an evening of serious studying. Kevin had settled down to read the signed copy of Perdita Legent’s Merlin book he’d bought. While Harry’s brain had been in another place entirely, there had been a book sale. 

Harry went up the dorm to try out his grey quill with the bronze nib. The apparatus on his desk was a scroll holder that kept the parchment in place. The bronze nib was heavy in his fingers and kept scratching the parchment. Disheartened, he sat back and twirled the feather back and forth between his fingers. He wondered what kind of bird it belonged to. Bits of story came to mind, suggesting it was a feather from a wild goose. It would be time for them soon, to form up into lines and fly from winter, fly high and away. Even now, the feather grabbed at the wind, or the wind at the feather. Tomorrow he would fly and feel the air rushing over and through him.

A wordless understanding fell into place. He stroked the pen across the parchment, his hand light and deft, feeling the air move along that delicate plane, drawing the bronze nib in a sleek black line.

He played with it getting the feel of it in his hand before he tried to make letters. Harry had seen beautiful handwriting as swooping and graceful as wing beats. Surely it would make it more fun to write.

It would take a lot more practice. Meanwhile, he had an essay to tackle, and future essays piling up behind that one like being butted by seven years worth of goats. But occasionally Harry stopped to look out the window and catch the stars coming out. That night he slept sweetly in the sheltering wings of his eagle bed.

Their Health session was before breakfast and consisted of a hike. They were expected to keep a brisk pace, with an older student in front and one behind handling the laggards. It was easy for Harry. He stayed near the middle so that his awareness of other people kept him with the group, and enjoyed the morning air and the opportunity to explore the grounds. This hike circled the Quidditch pitch, though the leader spent most of his time pointing out just where the bounds of the Forbidden Forest was. He made it sound so inviting!

They got to wash up in the Quidditch showers and change into their regular uniforms before going to breakfast.

Elves would take care of their dirty clothes. ELVES.

“Sooooo… “ he said, hypnotically waving a chunk of melon on his fork, “Elves?”

“And?” Morag responded.

“There are elves washing our exercising gear and putting them back in our dorms?”

“And?”

Beside him, Kevin sat up straight. “Elves. Elves.”

“Sorry, yes, elves. House elves. They do the cleaning around here.” 

Harry could not imagine castle full of Summers. Maybe a ruined one, but not this place, magical as it was in other ways.

Kevin went on asking and Morag went on explaining that besides Hogwarts, some magical families had their own house elves, and there was a magical bond between a house elf and its household.

Magical bonds sounded perilous. He checked on his wand which was tucked safely in a deep pocket.

The Gryffindor and Hufflepuff firsties hurried from the tables out to their first class. The Ravenclaws with all the time free before lunch ahead of them, lingered out even the Slytherins, who passed by with a few practice jabs about pigs.

“So I take it we are waiting for something, gentlemen?” Anthony looked up and down the table. “We could be in the library right now.”

Harry admitted, “I want to see what happens at the end of break—”

Poof, empty tables, even the fork out of Kevin’s hand. Where did he put all that food when he was so thin?

“—fast. So, done waiting.”

Then they went to the library, and lost Harry as they settled down to read and he ran a very quiet and shadowy riot through the stacks.

There were books that sang. Not words, but a vibration, like light he could hear instead of see. He was not going to rudely rush up and drag one off the shelf. No matter what the other students were doing, he was going to do this his own best way. Were there books in this library that sang to him?

One section of stacks sang seductively behind a locked gate. There were books that might read him back. Not now, not yet if ever.

Music teased him from high up. He wheeled one of the tall ladders over to his best guess of shelf and climbed up. The small book had fallen or been hidden behind the other books on the shelf and was more dusty. He half sat on the top step of the ladder and looked around. The library moved like water ruffled by a wind. Could it storm in here? It was calmest by the librarian’s station.

He took the book to her. “Ma’am, I think this book was out of place. Do you have anything to get the dust off it?”

The librarian-witch had frowned as he approached, but her face calmed as she tenderly took the book. Her wand made a slow swirl above it and motes of dust rose in a spiral then vanished. “Sangster’s ‘Arsachd Makaris’. Unless you can read Gaelic, and archaic Gaelic at that, it isn’t for you. But you were right to bring it to me. Thank you.” She gave him a wintry smile and levitated the book onto a stack of paper that wrapped around it. “I will see to its care.”

“Do you know what the title means?”

“Something like, ‘Makers of Antiquity’. But in Gaelic, ‘makar’ can also be a poet or a wizard.”

Harry checked on his fellow Ravenclaws. He was the only one of them not buried in a stack of books. He would have to do that, but not yet. It was too soon to look at the small details. He turned his attention to the sea of books around him. What had been his experience of magic so far? That he felt responsible for the objects he worked wizard magic on. They wouldn’t take a class on the theory of magic until next year, but there was nothing to stop him researching now. He was supposed to be pursuing knowledge, not passively sitting there and having it hammered into him.

He licked his lips. The air was dry, with a faint musty tang. Even magic must be challenged keeping all these books clean and dry. No wonder Madame Pince had fussed like a mother who’d found her lost child dirty. Well, if he didn’t know which book would suit him, he’d pick something at random. Harry browsed through the card catalogue, leading with his left hand. The lucky winner of this completely random process was ‘Harmonices Mundi: A Commentary.’ Harry turned away from the catalogue with the card in his hand, when he heard a menacing, “HmHMM,” from the librarian’s desk. She pinned him with her gaze, then glanced significantly to his left at the sign that said, ‘For the convenience of students and staff please do not remove cards from the card catalogue’. Someone had clearly left off the ‘on pain of death’ clause. Harry memorised the information and went to track down the right shelf.

His book was there. It was about as small and obscure looking as the first book, though less old and far less dusty. However, it was quite lacking in enticing vibrations. Nevertheless, he’d happened upon it and would not reject it out of hand. That would be rude. His stint in the library had so far only increased the possibility that the inanimate could have feelings if there was enough magic around.

Harry found a chair to curl up into and absorbed himself reading. It was not a friendly read, as it quoted the Latin of the original book and he had to guess from context as best he could what the quote meant. The surprising thing he learnt was that this was a commentary on a book by the Muggle astronomer Kepler. It discussed from a wizard’s point of view that the motions of the heavens produced a music that could be heard by the soul. Sitting in the library, surrounded by books that were more than dead words on a page, he could believe it. He’d try to get through it before the Astronomy class Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, he’d hunt down a Latin primer. Oh, and start at least one of those essays. So if a needle was once a match, even though it was now clearly a needle, did it somehow ‘remember’ being a match? He returned to the card catalogue. When he sat down with the other Ravenclaws, they gave him the abstracted nods of the focused. It was easy to join their studious trance.

Every once in a while, Terry Boot sneezed. Apparently he had the habit of flicking his own nose with the feather end of his quill. That might account for the ink that was still on his cheek. Which he still didn’t know was there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another 'class' that is mandatory for the younger students: Health & Activity. Once a week they get a short lecture on various health topics, and once a week they are required to do some vigorous activity as a group, usually a hike.


	8. Lunch With Ron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry reconnects with Ron by having lunch at the Gryffindor table. He's looking forward to his first flying lesson, but his pleasant day is interrupted by a pain out of the past.

_‘…the best of our moments are marred by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

Like the organiser he was, Anthony alerted everyone in time to check out their books and make it back to Ravenclaw to get that afternoon’s supplies for History of Magic and Defence Against The Dark Arts to take to lunch. Harry wasn’t a fan of being organised by another, but unlike Adstan Chambers, Anthony didn’t give the impression of doing it for any other reason than he wanted to be helpful to his group. Okay, maybe he also gave the impression that he thought he was best at organising, and if it wasn’t for him that everything would fall apart but otherwise he seemed harmless. It was like being bossed by a canary.

Today they had lunch with the Gryffindor first years. With the air of a triumphant discoverer, Ron Weasley introduced Harry to Seamus Finnegan, Dean Thomas, Neville Longbottom, Lavender Brown, and Emma Vane. “Yeah, Harry and me rode up on the train together. I was surprised as anything, him showing up out of nowhere,” Ron said in the third variation of this sentence.

His twin brothers popped up behind him. “And then ickle Ronnie-kins trapped him in the compartment—”  
“—and kept mum except when he told the story five times that night—”  
“—and six times the next day—”  
“—but at breakfast this morning he made sure everyone heard about it.”  
“Hi, Harry. We’re Fred—”  
“—and George. We’ll sort little brother if he’s a pain.”  
“He’s harmless as long as you keep his paws away from your plate.”  
“Can’t resist a nice bit of bacon. If he had a tongue like a toad no one’s bacon would be safe.”

Ron was sputtering like a leaky kettle. To give him time to recover, Harry looked from the Weasley twins to the Patil twins. Padma and Parvati were sitting with each other, identical dark heads bent together like two halves trying to become whole. “Are there a lot of twin wizards?”

“Only when something is so amazing that Magic itself decrees there must be two of it.”  
“Also it runs in our family.”  
“Even better, it flies.”  
“All us Weasleys have been on the Quidditch team—”  
“—except Percy but he’s a prefect—”  
“—that runs in the family too, sad to say—”  
“—so no pressure, Ronnie-kins.”

Harry wondered if he would ever get used to people looking at him expecting he would fill the gaps in the conversation. It was like walking on stepping stones with a blindfold on. “I wouldn’t know anything about Quidditch if Ron hadn’t filled me in,” he said. Harry could tell that Ron still felt the glory of being the first student to meet the Boy Who Lived was the best thing that ever happened to him. It was annoying but Harry sympathised anyway.

“Don’t worry we’ll set you straight.”  
“Ron follows the Chudley Cannons. If you knew what that meant you’d know what we mean.”

Ron turned red. “Shove off, you two.”

A pair of older Gryffindor girls passed by and Fred and George’s heads swivelled as if on one neck. “Got to go—”  
“See you around—”  
“Nice to meet you!” they chorused, and were gone.

Harry looked over at the Patil twins. They were turned inward, keeping each other to each other. While he envied such closeness, he couldn’t imagine it for himself. What would the Dursleys have done with two Harry Potters? They could certainly have split the same amount of food between them. They would have had to share Summer, and what Harry could have of Summer was unbearably precious to him.

He’d fallen out of the conversation. He knew this because Emma Vane was brushing his hair aside and running her fingers over the scar. “Hey!” he said, falling off the bench to get away. He landed hard on the stone floor, to the laughter of distant Slytherins.

“I just wanted to see if it was real,” Emma protested. “It didn’t hurt, right?” The light glinted off the mist forming on her spectacles.

“If it was fake it would still be real…” It did hurt, it burned now, seared. He tried to press his forehead against the cool stone beneath him.

“What does that even mean, mate?” Ron sounded bewildered.

“It means he’s a Ravenclaw.” Kevin knelt down next to Harry. “Alright, are you?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Emma snivelled before hastily leaving.

“It does hurt. It never used to.” The pain was fading. He wrapped a shadow around his forehead, feeling the cool removal of it. Not quite there, seen but not noticed. His appetite gone, Harry sat quietly until it was time to go to their next class.

Harry had accepted that ghosts were real. It seemed to go with magic, and the Grey Lady had a gentle manner. But a ghost teacher? Harry sat down next to Kevin and they traded looks of disbelief.

Binns was boring. Harry had looked forward to this class because he hoped that knowing the history of the wizarding world would help him find out the secrets that were being kept about him. He didn’t expect specific information, but a broader knowledge of his new society ought to give him a starting point. He looked around. Some of the students were actually napping, but others were reading the textbook and ignoring the lecture.

He stared at Binns, contemplating the ghost teacher’s here-not-here-ness. Why would a ghost stay on staff? Couldn’t they brick up the door and teach History of Magic in a non-haunted room? There were plenty of unused classrooms. Why were there fewer students here than there used to be?

Harry took out his Defence textbook and started browsing through it in preparation for the next class. When Binns said a word that caught his attention, he would stop, listen, take a few notes, then go back to his other book. He was sitting next to Michael this time. By the end of the class, Michael was doing the same thing, though he sometimes paid attention to things Harry didn’t. Harry made a note to compare with him later. Hopefully the Defence class would be more interesting.

It was, and not in a pleasant way. Professor Quirrell was alive, but he stuttered so badly it was hard to follow the lecture. This was not that much of a problem as it was almost straight from the book. Harry’s head started to ache. A feverish heat grew in his scar. He couldn’t hold on to the shadows. Then the class was dismissed. Harry swept everything into his satchel and lunged out the door. Momentum carried him down the hall and straight into a wall. He leaned against it, gasping, sagging, until his knees hit the stone.

A quick clip of adult steps approached. “Mr. Potter, can you sit up?” asked Professor McGonagall.

The heat was fading. “Yes, Professor. I feel better now.” He sat up and looked around at the circle of hovering faces.

McGonagall shooed them away and laid her cool, dry palm on Harry’s forehead. “Mr. Weasley, take Potter to see Madam Pomfrey. I will inform Professor Flitwick.”

The Gryffindor prefect helped Harry to his feet and led him away. “I’m Percy Weasley, I believe you’ve met my little brother Ron, do you remember? Did you hit your head?”

He was eleven, not eight. “M’scar aches.”

“I see, I was just checking to make sure you weren’t light-headed. Madam Pomfrey will take care of you, you can be sure.”

Once in the hospital wing, Percy handed Harry off to Madam Pomfrey, who made him lie down on a bed while she ran a wand over him. “Does your scar hurt often, Mr. Potter?” As she spoke to him, a scroll of parchment spit out of the tip of her wand, which she glanced at as they spoke.

“Not before coming to Hogwarts. It hurt at lunch as well, but it goes away after a few minutes.”

“Your curse scar may be reacting to magic in the castle. Where did you live before this?”

She asked it calmly, but Harry saw the words of the question flare up like they were on fire then as quickly fade. He shrank back against the pillow. “With my Muggle relatives.”

“There was no magic around?”

No flare this time, but Harry knew this was headed in a dangerous direction. “There was what I had.”

“How about when you got your school supplies in Diagon Alley? Did it bother you then?”

“No, ma’am. Well, I had a headache but it was short,” he said, remembering the uncomfortable scene in the Leaky Cauldron.

Professor Flitwick came in and levitated himself into the chair next to Harry’s bed. “How are you feeling, Mr. Potter?”

“I feel fine now, Professor.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Will you need to keep him here, Poppy?”

“Hmm. What’s your next class, Mr. Potter?”

“Flying.”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. Even if I let you go to the class, all you could do would be to watch.” She turned to Flitwick. “Filius, I would like to keep him here until supper. Which he should not miss. He is severely underweight for his age. I am prescribing him a course of nutritional supplement potions.” They were talking with their eyes, the way adults did. He knew it was about him, and he suspected that he’d been diagnosed with a case of Dursleys.

He’d seen it before at school, but in the end it came to nothing. And right now, it came to missing Flying class. Harry turned his back on authority and curled up in a resentful ball.

“It’s a pity you’ll miss your first flying class, Mr. Potter. There will be others. You should lie quietly. If you like, I will read to you.”

Harry rolled back to face him. “What would you read?” he asked, nudged by curiosity.

“I haven’t yet found an ethics book for you. They’re generally very advanced. But I have here a book of stories told to children, such as your parents would have read to you. It’s called ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’, and is meant for younger children, but you should have a chance to hear these stories too. They are part of the common knowledge of the wizarding world.”

Harry slid down in the bed, signalling his willingness by attention. He was still angry, but he had to admit that people with mysterious head pain not being let to go flying was reasonable. Besides, Professor Flitwick probably had other things to do, but here he was spending time with Harry.

He fell asleep to the tale of the Fountain of Fair Fortune. When he woke up, the book was tucked under his hand, with a note from Professor Flitwick that he should return it once he was done with it, but he was free to loan it to Kevin Entwhistle as well.

Madame Pomfrey checked on him again and pronounced him fit to go. “But if you feel faint or experience the same pain, you should come see me at once. Your nutritional supplement potions will be served with your meals; be sure to take them.”

It wasn’t quite supper time, but Harry didn’t want to go back to Ravenclaw Tower. Instead, he sat in the courtyard outside the Great Hall and read the book. It didn’t take long to go through the stories. Some of them were spooky. He hadn’t had much exposure to fairy tales that weren’t from Disney. The Dursleys’ aversion to magic had banned a lot of the classic movies, much to Dudley’s complaint. For once, they denied him. Harry now knew why they didn’t want him to see evil witches or fairies. It might have given him ideas.

There were other students in the courtyard. Some of them were studying in the late afternoon sunshine, but occasionally a pair would slip not very discreetly behind a pillar. He couldn’t imagine himself doing… kissing things. Being around other people doing it, even discreetly, sent him out into the sunshine to soothe the knot in his middle. The low angle of late afternoon sunlight cast the long sweep of the lawn in a haze and dropped sequins on the lake. What would it be like to skim the water, to maybe see the giant squid looming under the surface and pull up, laughing as he dodged a playful splash? 

Like a stone in a river, he stood still as the traffic of the student body flowed around him and went into the Great Hall. A bird swooped down, skimming the lake, then turned on edge on for a few beats, dodging a questing tentacle. Its plumage had been dark, but now he could see the white underside with black wingtips. It escaped to a tree by the shore far down from where Harry was standing, and was lost in the branches.

“Harry, come in to supper.” It was Lisa Turpin at his elbow. “ It’s your first Tuesday supper at Hogwarts, you don’t want to miss it. They’ve got proper hotpot.”

Harry blinked at her and smiled. “Sorry, it’s a nice day. A little bit of summer left, you know? I’ll come in, though, if it’s proper hotpot.” He let her steer him in. “It was nice of you to come get me. I’d probably miss the meal if it was just me.”

“Is it because you’re in a new place?”

He thought about this. Lisa led him over to the Ravenclaw table and placed him between her and Kevin again. “Don’t talk to him,” she told the others, “He’s thinking.”

The Ravenclaw table was the place for this. Terry Boot, still adorned with an ink blot, suggested, “Start putting food on his plate. He has to eat all the food we put on the plate until he joins the present moment.” He paused and considered Harry thoughtfully. “Or at least taste it.”

A couple of minutes later Harry started eating from his plate without thinking about how he hadn’t filled it. “It’s so different from anything I had before…” he looked around, found himself surrounded by grinning Ravenclaws and continued speaking to Lisa. “Before was awful. This is so much better I feel like I’m dreaming and I don’t want to wake up.”

“Have some toad in the hole,” Kevin waved a forkful at him then pulled it back before Harry could eat off his fork. “There’s nothing dream-like about sausage, is what I’m saying. If you want to live in the moment, you know where you are with sausage.”

“Don’t fling sausage around, Kevin,” Anthony scolded from where his kosher meal was sequestered at the end of the table.

“You’ll wake up when you get your first Troll grade,” Lisa predicted.

“Augh, don’t say that,” said an older girl. “T grade alert!” And then she and many of the older Ravenclaws smashed a pea on their foreheads.

Prefect Penelope Clearwater did not smash a pea on her forehead, but kindly explained, “A superstition. Ward off the Tr… T grade with a pea at the table. Otherwise people run off to study instead of eating.”

The Troll Alert girl said cheerfully, “It’s fine to say Troll now. The power of the pea lasts through the meal.”

Padma asked, “Is this custom related to the expression ‘egg on your face’, which denotes embarrassment?”

“More like throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder when you spill it,” said another.

A lively discussion started about food superstitions and idioms that ended in a throwing of peas that ended in a huffing of prefects.

  
The promised potion appeared next to Harry’s plate, tagged with his name.

Kevin leaned in to read the tag. “What’s that, then?”

“Potion. The matron said I had to have it with meals.”

“Probably tastes like dirty socks,” said Lisa. “Most potions do, or worse. Best chuck it down your throat and eat something right after.”

Harry pulled the top off the vial and sniffed it. Promptly he tossed it down his throat then followed it with a mouthful of sausage. He reached for his pumpkin juice. “Bloody disgusting. And I had to miss flying.”

“Ohhh, mate. It was the best,” said Kevin. “I don’t care if I never throw my leg over a horse again.”

Penelope Clearwater came over, putting a knee on the bench beside Harry so she wouldn’t be looming over him. Her face was a graceful oval framed by wavy blonde hair and her eyes were rich hazel-green. “Percy Weasley told me he’d escorted you to the hospital wing, and Professor Flitwick told the Ravenclaw prefects that you would need to take a potion with your meals. I see you’ve already downed it, good work. Madame Pomfrey will have you better soon.”

“I hope so. I don’t know how long I’m banned from flying lessons.”

“That’s awful, but don’t worry, it’s required for students to take flying lessons, so they will get you up in the air as soon as it is safe.”

Harry didn’t say that being safe was over-rated compared to flying, but it might have been on his face because Penelope smiled at him and patted his shoulder before she left.

In her wake the floodgates opened for the others to talk about flying. They were bursting with it. Very few of them had ever been on a broom before, and those had been toy brooms that only flew low and slow.

“I had a flying toy,” Anthony told them, “that was antique and shaped like a simurgh with illusory wings. It was brilliant but I was only allowed to play with it under supervision.” He added, for clarity, “It’s kind of like a peacock only with the head of a dog and the claws of a lion. The real ones were supposed to have been big enough to carry an elephant.”

“’The real ones’, he says.” Kevin put a napkin over his face and took a few deep breaths.

Harry patted him carefully on the arm. “Alright there, Kevin?”

“I understand you so much better right now, Harry.” He sighed and came out from under the napkin. “Dessert will help me swallow all this. I can foresee seven years of being told wizarding tall-tales and not being able to tell them from wizarding fact.”

A solid supper turned them from eagles ready to fly to pigeons ready for their roost. In their dorm, the boys rested on their beds with a book on their knees, or sat at their desks and wrote. They had made a rule that when the majority of people wanted to go to sleep, the lights had to go out except for their private reading lights. It was Michael who had to be persuaded into bed. His hands moved swiftly over the tiles, but he couldn’t make it before the time limit undid his work.

“We should work in pairs,” Kevin suggested. “There’s room for two to stand there. If the puzzle gets harder or the time limit gets shorter, we’ll need a way to increase our efforts and learning to work together on the easiest puzzle will help.”

“Sleep on it,” said Anthony, who liked to get to bed early.


	9. Being Snaped Builds Character

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry attends his first Potions class. Professor Snape is as kindly and benevolent as he usually is.

_‘Legend mixes everything together in her cauldron.” —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

Another breakfast, another gross potion, another beaming smile from Penelope for his being a good boy who drank his potion without a fuss. He could forgive her that for the kindness in her eyes that looked like mossy stones in a stream. Witch eyes, is what she had. Under their encouraging gaze he ate a whole orange.

Anthony cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, our next class is Potions. I am given to understand that Professor Snape is very strict and exceedingly easy to annoy. Let us endeavour to … to not be annoying.” He shook his forelock back from his face and got up, bristling with intent.

Twenty minutes later, Harry was regretting the orange. Apparently he annoyed Professor Snape by existing. He could not wrap himself in shadow; in the potions classroom they were not very friendly, or perhaps they were avoiding the white hot spotlight of Snape’s cold black glare. He had forgot what it was to be afraid, and his stomach roiled whenever the teacher’s black presence came near him. At least he wouldn’t find Petunia scary after Snape.

Now that was a connection worth thought. What did Snape know about him? He might as well be wearing a badge reading, ‘I know lots of secrets, don’t ask me.’ Harry peered at the recipe on the blackboard. Anyone who understood how all those things worked together to make a specific magical effect knew things Harry wanted to understand. He set his will grimly towards making the most of it. So what if Professor Snape was unpleasant; so what if he took points off Ravenclaw and gave him a bad grade? Anything he learnt was his. No take backs.

Two hours of Ravenclaw negative points later, they escaped. Outside Padma waited until the door was firmly closed and they were well down the hall, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws travelling together. “I have got to warn my sister. Gryffindor will take Potions with Slytherin Friday morning.” She shuddered.

“Yeah, but not with Potter,” said a Hufflepuff boy.

“I would have been a puddle on the floor if Professor Snape talked to me like that,” a Hufflepuff girl chimed in.

“I think Professor Snape will have plenty of bile left by Friday, even without Harry,” said Lisa.

“More,” said Terry Boot. They all shuddered.

Older Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were appearing for their Potions class. “Look, they’ve been Snaped,” said one as they moved past in the opposite direction.

“It builds character!” another said cheerfully, and was slapped on the back of the head by someone behind her.

“Don’t take it personally, he doesn’t like anyone. He just puts up with Slytherins.”

“Remember, if you want a Potions pre-N.E.W.T. class, you need an Outstanding on your Potions O.W.L. or Snape won’t accept you. Can’t start working on it too early,” was the advice of a Ravenclaw, met by universal groans.

Chilled by the prospect of seven years under the gaze of Snape, the first years straggled off, splitting off into the usual groups and singles until the Ravenclaw boys were alone. “So,” said Harry, “Is a Potion N.E.W.T. that important?” He looked at Anthony, looked directly. If Anthony was being called on for his knowledge, he deserved the respect of someone assuming he’d know. 

“It depends on the profession, even without counting those whose business it is to make potions for the market. A lot of positions in the Ministry, for instance, want a N.E.W.T., particularly in Magical Law Enforcement. Also healing and curse-breaking. Extremely useful, potions are, and getting a N.E.W.T. is not easy, so you are in demand if you have one.”

It was at this time that Harry realised he’d asked the wrong person. Anthony was probably right about all that, but did he want any of that? What did he want, anyway?

“Let’s go to the library, then. I want to review my potions notes,” said Terry Boot. Everyone drifted after him, except Harry.

He wanted to find Summer. This would be a good time, when people were either thinking about class or thinking about lunch. He ducked around a corner, slid into a shadow, dodged some older Slytherins, and headed outside.

Harry had been anticipating yesterday’s sunshine, but today the clouds were rolling in, heavy and raked into fantastical shapes by the Scottish Highlands. Good.

Without thinking too much about it, he meandered like a stream around the awareness of those who might notice him. He skimmed the edge of the lake, hopping stones in a low area where the ground was muddy, and then veered around the base of a hillock, climbing it on the far side. It looked artificial, as though earth had been heaped up to support the tree. A raised root made an inviting seat. Harry let his legs stretch out in front of him and only then gazed up, his eyes rising over the rim of his glasses. And there was Summer, laying stretched along a bough that split low from the main trunk.

“O Leaf, who delights my eyes; well met.” Her smile broke the broad grey bar painted down the right side of her face. The grey of it echoed in her rain cloud eyes.

“Summer, I live up in the clouds and stars now.” Harry drew his knees up, wrapping them with one arm. “And my head is up there half the time and the other half I’m eating.”

“You left your feet on the ground, no doubt. Ah, Leaflet, you are blooming at summer’s end, pink as rowan berries.” She swapped ends as deftly as a snake and cupped his chin with the tips of two fingers. The wind off the lake blew his hair back from his face. “A foe draws near. And you are a little child no longer; you gather strength, and it is noted. Now, swiftly, my hero, there is little time for us.” She pushed a berry between his lips and he crushed it in his mouth, sweet-tart and seed-spiky. “In the land was strife and death knew many men. They were laid down in the cauldron and drawn out live again. They took up their arms but their mouths were stopped. O my Leaf.” Her fingers still pressed against his lips. “Without great need, do not ask questions of me in this place. An enemy can teach you what a friend cannot.” She flicked his nose and drew back.

The freshening wind blew his hair all about. Thunder sounded. Summer was almost gone, and the tang of the berry on his tongue was the last of it. “I’m going to learn how to fly, Summer.” Harry took the feather he had levitated out of his satchel and offered it to her. “To keep you company.” 

As she put her hand to it he tickled her chin, and she laughed., catching his hand. “I shall carry it with me in my faring. Go fly now, Leaf.”

The rain began in earnest then, and Harry flung himself from under the tree, light feet bounding, air under and water above. He took the stone steps two at a time and skidded across the courtyard. His progress lunch-ward was stopped by a mop. “As if I lived to mop up after the likes of you,” growled Filch. “Don’t come past the door until you’ve stopped dripping.” He flung a rough, threadbare flannel at Harry.

“Sorry!” said Harry, and started dabbing at his soaking wet hair and robe. He was giggling and shivering about equally. The robe had kept some of the rain out but not all. Robert Hilliard, a senior Ravenclaw prefect, spotted him dripping by the door and cast a drying charm on him. “Don’t start the year with a cold, Potter. Get something hot and nourishing for lunch.” Harry started to move past but Hilliard stopped him. “Hold on a moment. Your hair…” he tried to flatten it but tsked. “Elflocks,” he muttered, “or snakes.”

“What?” said Harry.

“Your hair is irrepressible, Potter. Don’t worry about it. It only looks more like how it usually looks.”

Harry grinned at him. “I appreciate it,” he said, “Here’s your flannel back, Mr. Filch. Look, Hilliard dried it too.”

Filch muttered something under his breath as he took the flannel back, but he might have been talking to his cat.

“And don’t forget your potion,” Hilliard called after him, being clearly a member of the Better Harry Through Alchemy conspiracy.

“I’ve no notion of forgetting my potion,” Harry said, whirling back to rhyme. “I’ll drink an ocean of potion. In fast and slow motion.” Two steps forward and around again. “Down the hatch or as a lotion. With historic devotion.” Four steps forward, and one back. “Something something commotion for a potion revoLOtion!”

They blinked back at him: Filch just gaping; Hilliard magnificently croggled. Harry raised his hands in victory signs and trotted away.

  
His mood throughout lunch was elevated, sunny, happy to talk to others at the table. The potion went first, so he could wipe out the taste with real food. Then a bowl of stew warmed him up. Harry then found himself craving fruit and downed a pork and apple pasty followed by a raspberry bun. His feet were as light as usual climbing to Ravenclaw tower for his Astronomy night afternoon nap. He stripped to his underwear, oozed into bed and let himself drift off to sleep. The shining bubbles that had floated through him popped one by one until his dreams were still and dark.

Then the woman screamed; the green light flashed like a torch to the eyes. He was alone, caged, cold. The bars bound him in their shadows. Then the bars were the light shining through the louvres in his cupboard, and he was beating against the wooden womb, screaming to be born.

He sat bolt upright, the sweat starting on his skin. Something had hold of his leg and he kicked free.

“Hey! You, you were screaming.” Terry Boot took a quick step back. “I just thought you’d want to be woken up.” Extra cream had been added to his mocha skin, revealing a scattering of freckles; his eyes showed white rings around the mosaic blue and brown irises.

Harry fought his way out of the bedding. “Sorry. Yeah, sorry.” He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. “Did I say anything?”

“I didn’t hear any words, but you started whimpering or muttering before you screamed.”

“Is it just us?”

“The others are down in the common room or in the library. The best spots are taken so I came up here.”

“I like it up here. It’s airy. We have our own desks and a great view when we need to … stop looking at letters on a page.”

Terry wriggled his shoulders back to a level of comfort. “I know there’s a lot of empty room on the schedule, and we’re supposed to study on our own time, but I want to explore, too. This would be a great place for re-enactors and historical pageants. Dad said he got into it after being a student here.” He saw the bewildered look on Harry’s face. “Dad and Mum met when he was Will Scarlet and she was a Saracen princess. You know, Robin Hood.”

“Oh, right. Robin Hood. I didn’t know people did that except in films.”

“They still go to the archery tournament every year.” He smirked. “They got Muggle-married by Friar Tuck. In costume.”

“They sound like fun parents.”

“They are, but don’t ask me about trunk hose. Never again. Better, now?”

“Yeah. I need a shower, though. We’ve got Astronomy tonight, right?”

“Right. Hey, did you see on the notice board about the art appreciation course?”

Harry shook his head.

“It turns out, it’s kind of a game. You go talk to the portraits and they give you clues, and when you solve them you’re directed to another part of the castle. Like a guided tour.”

“I know the portraits talk, but do they talk like people? Back and forth?”

“They’re not like people, but some portraits are more aware and clever than others. So they know things about their own past and sometimes about what they’ve seen as portraits.”

“I’m in,” said Harry, before his brain caught up to his mouth.

Terry grinned. “Brilliant! I’ll see who else wants to go. Friday should be good for us, and this Friday, before classes ramp up.”

Harry had found the Astronomy textbook harder to read than he’d hoped. His Muggle school had touched a lot of science subjects, but this book was stuffed with unfamiliar vocabulary. He did better with the diagrams and finally managed to focus his telescope on the correct lunar crater, the last of the Ravenclaws to do so. Possibly he would have done it faster if Ron Weasley hadn’t been chatting in his ear and filling him up with the news from Gryffindor. But having Ron at his left kept Emma Vane from sliding up to him and so was worth the distraction.

The Astronomy tower itself he loved: the telescopes, the star charts, tall and elegant Professor Sinistra. He’d never been up so high before. The clouds made it difficult to look at anything other than the moon, but the main telescope had a charm on it to see through clouds. Sinistra had it pointed at Mars. To see the red planet with his own eyes, the scanty icecaps and the black-silver dot of its moon Deimos, thrilled him to bits. 

In the south, low in the sky, someone had spotted a moving object. “It’s a Muggle aircraft,” said Sinistra. “Fortunately they do not come near Hogwarts, but if you looked you’d see them every night, cloud cover permitting.” The rest of the world was out there: the Dursleys, the Royal Family, West Ham United. It was a sobering thought to leave on, but the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins would be up soon. Next term they’d switch sections.

As they settled into their beds, Kevin said, “Now we’ve been to each class once. Is this the end of the beginning?”

Terry Boot farted with suspicious timing.


	10. A Boat Knows Not How Deep is the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once upon a time there was a boy with a scar on his forehead. It was shaped like a lightning bolt and he thought it was a little cool. He didn't have anything else to be cool about, it must be said. Then he found out he was going to wizarding school and he was a hero for having killed the bad guy at the precocious age of 15 months. Everyone expected a lot of him. But instead of being lord of all he surveyed, the second coming of Merlin himself, it turns out that someone has a button they push and his scar hurts like being hit by lightning and it really sucks. Naming his bed in the infirmary, 'the Harry Potter Bed' is not sufficient consolation. Maybe he'll talk to the kid in the other bed instead of thinking about flying.

_‘An aged man is a paltry thing_   
_A tattered coat upon a stick, unless_   
_Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing_   
_For every tatter in its mortal dress’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’_

Professor Flitwick held Harry back after Thursday Charms. “You’re to check in with Madame Pomfrey this afternoon. If she’s satisfied that you’re well, you can join the Gryffindor/Slytherin first year flying lesson this afternoon. But you mustn’t count too heavily on it. Curse scars are no simple matter.”

Though Quirrel was as hard to pay attention to as ever, Harry felt fine until the very end of class. He was closing his textbook up in his satchel when his scar burned like a brand and he lost consciousness.

The cage bars were wrapped around him and no struggle of his would get him loose. Their tightness cut into his swollen head. Something touched his mouth; he licked his dry lips and tasted berry, felt it in his mouth. Tart sweet, furry with tiny hairs, crunchy in its middle. He bit down and it filled him with light.

Harry woke up in the hospital wing. Someone was sitting next to his bed, white-haired, wearing a bright blue robe. So, not Snape. His eyes didn’t want to see more than a blue blur, so he closed them again. “Hello,” he offered.

“Hello, Harry. Would you like your glasses?”

“I’d rather not just yet. Is that you, Headmaster Dumbledore?” Harry was sure it was, but he wanted an answer, especially from this man. He looked like he had secrets older than Snape.

“Yes, it is. I told Professor Flitwick I would sit with you so as not to pull him away from class. It was an excellent excuse to get some reading in; so quiet and peaceful it is here.”

“What are you reading?”

“I’m spending a little time with Wodehouse. His works never fail to amuse me.” Dumbledore closed the book without putting in a marker. 

Harry kept still. He’d skipped the Headmaster’s turn. He felt quite comfortable wrapped up in bed. Clearly he was a sick child who should be humoured. And with his eyes closed, he would look more pathetic and not give away where his attention was.

“Does your head still hurt?”

“No.” He didn’t need to peek to feel an attention directed at him, like having your eyes closed when someone shines a torch in your face. How was he supposed to find out secrets instead of giving them away? Even trying to sneak would be giving something away. Unlike the Dursleys, people here knew how to look through shadows. Harry waited for another question. Would it be three and three? Would that mean Dumbledore’s blood sang? Did it call to the gentry?

“You do look worn. I’ve no doubt Madame Pomfrey will want to keep you at least until supper time. How do you like Ravenclaw, Harry?”

He blinked, then fixed his gaze to the hem of his blanket where his fingers toyed with a loose thread. “It’s nice. I like the view from the windows.”

Dumbledore had a presence like a big cloud that started out white and fluffy only to later produce storms. Now it stirred, but what stirred it and what the disturbance meant was beyond Harry. Besides, it was his turn. “Did you mean that about music? When you said it was a magic beyond all we do here.” His eyes rose, reluctant, drawn up. Dumbledore had a mild face to go with his voice, and mild blue eyes that twinkled remotely like the last stars of dawn or the first stars of dusk.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore. “I meant it.”

The bed was like a boat, floating on water, and he didn’t know how deep, or if it was adrift at sea or tied up to the dock of a lake. Harry didn’t know how to swim, in any sense of the image.

Professor Flitwick came in and saved Harry from the Dumblestorm. “Hello, Albus. I see Mr. Potter is with us again. I know this situation is distressing, but consider that we now know there is a problem to be addressed and can find a way to manage it.” He took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief.

Harry tensed up. As kindly as Flitwick may have meant his words, Harry’s gut told him that the basic problem was Harry, and not just a scar but a lot of things about Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Puzzled. And the business with the glasses meant Flitwick was buying time to choose his words. Good words didn’t need such care.

“Has his family been notified, Albus?”

“I’ll see to it, Filius.”

Harry shivered. He could smell secrets like potatoes rotting in the rubbish bin.

“I know you’ll be disappointed to hear it, Mr. Potter, but Madame Pomfrey and I agree that you will not be permitted to taking flying lessons until we understand better what triggers these attacks. It is unsafe for you to be flying when they occur. Flying lessons are necessary to teach children safe broomstick habits, but it is a regular cause of accidents. Just today, Mr. Longbottom was brought in with a broken wrist when he lost control of his broom and fell.” He glanced down the long room to where a curtain had been drawn around a bed.

Dumbledore stood up. “I’ll have Poppy move you down next to Neville. It gets dull in here, does it not? A little company should help.” He left to find Madame Pomfrey.

Flitwick lowered his voice. “Here’s your book satchel. The two of you will be in here overnight. Longbottom is rather shy, and has had a shock. I hope the two of you will get on. A boy who is concerned about the integrity of the objects he has worked magic on seems like one who would be kind to others.”

It was a hint, but it was an open and honest hint. “Yes, Professor.” Flitwick patted him on the shoulder and left.

Madame Pomfrey bustled in and quickly had him tucked in the next bed over from the curtained one. Then she went around it to speak to her other patient. “Mr. Longbottom, I’ve put Mr. Potter next to you. We thought you’d both appreciate the company, but that is no reason to make a lot of noise. I know how boys your age can be.”

“Yes ma’am. No, ma’am’,” said a dispirited voice. 

Madame Pomfrey pulled the curtain aside. “Mr. Longbottom, Mr. Potter; Mr. Potter, Mr. Longbottom. I’ll have tea brought up to you.” She left them to each other.

Harry sat up in bed as the curtain was drawn aside. Neville Longbottom was a little taller than Harry; was a little bigger in all ways except the soft cap of his dark blond hair. He didn’t look so much plump as unfinished. Having taken Neville in with a sideways glance, Harry put his glasses on. “Hallo.”

Neville didn’t move except to turn his head to face Harry. His wrist was wrapped up in a thick quilted strapped pad. “Hello,” he said quietly. His voice had the wet sound of someone who had been crying.

“I feel bad for envying you. They won’t let me fly at all. Was it nice, other than the falling?”

“I don’t like heights much.” His lips pinched, his bones swam up from his soft face stark and painful.

“If you don’t want to talk, that’s okay. I’m not good at talking to people. Sometimes I run my mouth to fill the hole.”

“I don’t know what to say either.”

“I could read to you. Professor Flitwick read to me when I was in here the other day. So you can listen, or ask questions if you have them. How about ‘Magical Theory’? It’s weird they require it first year when it’s not on the schedule.”

“They teach it to first years in the second term.”

“Oh, that’s what they meant by ‘next year’. Well, I’ll read that, if it’s okay with you.”

“If you would be so kind.” Neville placed each word carefully. He was trying to put up a front to cover his upset; Harry hadn’t comforted anyone before but he knew what upset felt like from the inside.

“Here goes then. ‘Magical Theory’, by Adalbert Waffling.” Harry looked at the first sentence of the introduction, then paused to polish his glasses. He definitely needed them now.

“’As children, when we first experience magic, we take it for granted. A toddler desires a treat and it flies to his hand. To the child, this is the way the world works: the desire receives fulfilment. To our sorrow, we soon begin to understand that our magic will not bring us anything we want for the asking. It has limitations and rules that we disrespect to our peril. We understand many things about magic, and are ignorant of much more. The true nature of magic, as well as its ultimate source, is still an open question. The purpose of this text is to introduce students to the laws of magic and give them the elementary tools that will help them use this gift to the extent of their talent.’”

“Huh.” Harry looked up from the page. “So that’s how I ended up on the school roof. It’s like we forget how to use magic and have to relearn it the hard way.”

“I didn’t show any accidental magic until I was nine. Uncle Algie dropped me out of a window and I bounced. They thought I was a squib.” 

“He tried to kill you?”

“He didn’t mean to. Someone tried to hand him a meringue and he got confused.”

What would Harry want someone to say, if he told them he’d spent years in a cupboard? “That was wrong. He shouldn’t have done that to you.” His voice was thin and hard, not comforting as he’d hoped.

“A lot of times, people do things to you and you can’t stop them.”

Madame Pomfrey came in with a tea tray. She wasn’t carrying it; it floated serenely ahead of her, and hovered in the air as she arranged a table to hold it and two chairs. “Mr. Potter, you are in charge of pouring the tea. Don’t fill Mr. Longbottom’s cup too full. One can’t expect him to be steady under the circumstances. You will get supper later than the usual time as I am asking for a special menu for the two of you. I want you to go to sleep with nourishing food in you. But at the moment, you are entitled to some comfort.”

She waited until Neville had settled himself into a chair, then left them alone. They’d been given a selection of small sandwiches, fresh-baked scones with jam and cream, and slices of gingerbread with bits of fruit in. Neville nibbled on a piece of gingerbread while Harry poured. “The bread is so good here; I mean the sandwich bread. All the bread, but I never had fresh baked sandwich bread before. It makes the sandwiches taste so much better.”

“This gingerbread is good too,” Neville offered up to the small talk gods. The hot drink and the food brought their boy instincts to the fore and they set to in a better humour.

“Where do you live, Neville? Or would you rather I called you Longbottom?”

“Neville is fine if I can call you Harry?” His voice rose uncertainly.

“Go ahead. I’m in Surrey, by the way.”

“West Yorkshire. Do you like Surrey?”

“No.” It came out like a smack in the face, and Harry quickly added, “My relatives resent… having me live with them.”

“I live with my grandmother. She loves me, but she, she wants me to be more like my father. She even gave me his wand. At least I got into Gryffindor.”

Harry layered cream and jam on a scone. He was wondering behind his eyes what happened to Neville’s parents, but he didn’t want to ask a question that would get reflected back at him. Didn’t everyone know now anyway? Maybe everyone knew about Neville’s parents, too.

“She’s a witch, your grandmother?”

“Yes, all my family are. So they are nice people but they expect things of me.”

The Boy-Etcetera understood that. “So what do you like to do?”

Neville’s smile finally reached his eyes. “I like working with plants. Herbology is my best subject.”

Harry chuckled. “I’ve worked in the garden a lot but the magical part is a new. Trying to make sure my aunt had the nicest peonies on the street did not prepare me.”

“Hmm. Did she have any of these: hollyhocks, chamomile, foxglove, geranium, marigold?”

“Yes. Those are magical?”

“Not as such, but they have properties that can be used in magic. It’s even better if they’re raised in a garden where there are magical plants. They get a boost.”

“So, in potions?”

“Yes.” Neville stirred his tea obsessively. “I heard Professor Snape really doesn’t like you. He’s terrifying.”

“No, he’s not,” Harry automatically denied. As Neville was looking incredulous, Harry added, “He’s intimidating. But I like the way he talks, even when he’s saying mean things. His voice is so controlled. And I wish I could sweep around in a robe like that.” He leaned close to Neville and confided softly, “Sometimes I feel like I’m wearing a dress. I’ve only seen teachers wearing stuff like that on the telly.”

“Telly?” Neville was baffled, so Harry told him it was a kind of Muggle play.

“Anyway, Snape is dignified. And mean. But dignified. And I am undignified. The hair, you know?”

Neville looked at his hair. “Doesn’t it ever lie flat?”

“Not so far. I think if it did I might be dying or something.”

Harry prepped Neville on what the first potions class was like. “Pick a good partner. Someone steady.”

“Maybe Granger would partner me. She’s not very popular either.”

Harry didn’t question Neville’s unpopularity. School had taught him long ago to spot who was in and who was not. “She’s not? But she gets points for Gryffindor all the time, doesn’t she?”

“Ron Weasley says she’s bossy.”

“How is she bossy?”

“She’s always telling people how to do things.”

“Well, if she tells them right you should get her to study with you. You’ll know going in she’s smarter than you because she seems to be smarter than most. As long as she’s reasonably nice the bossy part might not be bad.”

“Why not? We might as well be friends. No… that’s not kind. I’ll ask her for help and maybe then we’ll be friends.” Neville defiantly finished off the gingerbread without asking.

“I think she’d be lucky to be your friend. You’re easy to talk to. And you listen, you pay attention.”

“Aren’t we friends too?”

“I guess. I’m still learning how. Nobody liked me. In Surrey.”

And Neville didn’t ask, because he understood that kind of pain. “Me too. Learning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magic may heal broken arms quickly, but not broken hearts.


	11. Flitbabblers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quest begins. The Ravenclaw first years band together to explore the secrets of Hogwarts. What lurks in the distant corridors and unused classrooms of the mysterious castle? What will they find? Who will find them? The only certainty is that they will climb and descend many stairs. Fitness is important!

  
_'Through the great gallery of the Treasure House_   
_Where banners of the Caliphs hang, night-coloured_   
_But brilliant as the night's embroidery,_   
_And wait war's music; pass the little gallery;_   
_Pass books of learning from Byzantium_   
_Written in gold upon a purple stain,_   
_And pause at last.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Gift of Harun Al-Rashid’_

Harry slept well that night. In fact, in the morning he was groggy from sleep still clutching at him. Neville was released with a caution to be careful of his wrist for a few days and come check in Monday morning. It was Harry who had to be scanned and measured and weighed and palpated. 

All that was bad enough, but Madame Pomfrey sat him down with his health questionnaire and worked on the answers with him. He had to say ‘I don’t know’ to a lot of it, and every time he said them the words got gooier on his tongue, clogged and mangled. His hands were no help, for all that he stared at them. Madame Pomfrey’s words were so calm and even that he knew she had expected such answers.

“Next time, Mr. Potter, you are to come at once if your head starts hurting. All the teachers have been informed, so you should merely ask to be excused. Oh, and carry this pass with you.” She handed him a small wooden disk. “This is only for you. You are not to loan it to any other student. It will permit you to be out of class, or your dorm after curfew, if you are coming to the hospital wing. If you need help to get here, ask for a prefect.”

Harry buried the pass deep in a pocket where he hoped no one would see it ever. 

The Flitbabblers met at breakfast. While Harry had been in the infirmary, the adventurers had named their merry fellowship. The girls signed up too, but Su Li, Padma, and Lisa came without Morag and Mandy, one of whom was having some unspecified girl specific problem with the other to support her.

They clustered at one end of the table. Anthony stood up at the end and made a speech. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to take part in this venture with such brave souls as yours. To victory!” He lifted his cup of pumpkin juice.

“Wait, is there a prize?” Michael Corner asked.

“No, just glory.”

“Glory? So you win by finishing first?”

“NO.” Su Li stood up at her seat, her face flushed and her deep brown eyes alight. “We gain glory through the steadfastness of our fellowship.” She scanned their faces, the looped braids caught high on her head swaying. “We will live and complete this quest and not fall aside ignobly; for we are Ravenclaw ‘98.” She pressed her fisted knuckles into the table as she leaned forward, lowering her voice but upping the intensity. “We are the Flitbabblers.”

They stared. And then they applauded wildly. Anthony looked misty-eyed. Su Li blushed tomato red and sat down to hide her face behind a glass of pumpkin juice.

“I knew this was a good idea,” said Terry Boot.

The directions in the schedule marked the start of the tour as being with Mistress Violet, whose portrait was located in an antechamber near the Great Hall. They found her easily: an elderly witch with the traditional hat set rakishly askew on her white curls. Draped in a white shawl, she was leaning back asleep in her chair. Su Li was nudged forward. Normally she was a quiet girl and her outburst had surprised them all. They wanted to see more of that. “Hail, Mistress Violet?”

“Coo. Is it stormy, dear?” She blinked her painted eyes open.

“We are the Flitbabblers? And we want to follow the quest? Would you help us please?” Her voice got softer as she lost her nerve.

“Oh, the quest. So you want the adventure path!” She sat up straight and the shawl slithered onto the floor. “I will set you on your way. BUT, be warned: your mettle will be tested and your innards will be mottled, if you dare this perilous journey. If you should falter, you will find yourself having milky tea and little biscuits as is proper for children.” She sniffed.

Kevin, always in the back, asked, “And if we don’t falter?”

“Then you will find out what you will find. Go three over and three down, walk a circle around, look out the window and under the door.”

She leaned back and tugged the brim of her hat down over her eyes.

The Flitbabblers huddled. “That was gnomic. Practically Delphic,” said Michael.

“We are all in Ravenclaw,” said Kevin dryly. Feeling very not literate, Harry decided not to ask--he would consult a dictionary later. Gnomic like garden gnomes, delphic like delphiniums? No one else asked.

“The most obvious interpretation of three over and three down is staircases. It could also mean steps, or…” Lisa’s eyes lit up. “I want this to be right. Like a crossword puzzle. If you could look down on Hogwarts from above it would be kind of like a multi layered crossword. There are places in a puzzle where there are two words located at the same number horizontally and vertically. My mum and I do crosswords together.”

At this point everyone made known their definitely correct opinions, except Harry. He listened to the word salad with half his attention. It was fun to have the right word in the right place, like making rhymes off the top of his head, but what about the right time? “Maybe there’s more than one right answer.”

“Like ‘choose your own adventure’ books,” Kevin said. “So people following the clues won’t all end up in the same place. Can portraits get bored? Because Mistress Violet seemed a little rehearsed. Everyone has to start here.”

Anthony cleared his throat. “For the honour of Ravenclaw, we should look for ingenious interpretations of the clues.”

“We should also respect the spirit of the clue and strive for an authentic understanding,” was Padma’s contribution.

“To make it clear to everyone, are we making this harder on ourselves?” Lisa looked around at everyone. “Because when we’re lost in the dungeons and Professor Snape wants us to explain what we thought we were doing, I’m not telling him it was my idea. Not just mine.”

For some reason everyone looked at Harry. No, he knew why. “The only way I can think of me influencing Professor Snape is to make him madder than he already is. Sue me, I don’t want to do that. Let’s try to avoid him. Aren’t all his classes doubles?”

“I wonder if there is a master schedule, and if we can obtain it,” mused Terry. “I bet Professor McGonagall has one.”

Harry passed on what he knew. “It’s Gryffindor and Slytherin first years Potions this morning. Neville Longbottom told me.”

“So,” said Lisa, “Crossword puzzle? Is it too Muggle? Who made this event? I don’t think portraits could do it themselves.”

“’Hogwarts, A History’, says the Headmaster has authority over the portraits,” Anthony told them. “And one would expect him to know the castle well.”

Michael added, “Because the interior structure can shift, like those staircases that move. You’d think the Headmaster would have a way of finding any place in Hogwarts.”

“In that case, let’s try something while the clue is still fresh. We go over three doors and/or passages, however it turns out, then see what lies three away in any direction. If it’s words we want they should start with the same letter.” Lisa bounced on her toes.

And off they went! It was fun, fun and friends and fellowship; it was adventure. Harry laughed and chatted and riddled with the rest of them. Their clues always led to another portrait. Harry wondered what they’d seen and who they’d known. All those witches and wizards who had studied here in the fifty or so years before now had gone on to support You-Know-What or fight him or run from him. They had walked these halls. If the Headmaster himself had made this quest-puzzle, weren’t the Flitbabblers also exploring the mind of Dumbledore? Was it also layers of puzzles, doors that were dead ends and dead ends that were the answers to riddles, and more than one right answer to any question?

That night, Michael and Anthony working together solved the sliding puzzle, getting the picture of a teenager. It animated and spoke. “Well done! Here’s the first clue - what do you always find in the last place you look?”

“That’s dead easy,” said Kevin. “Whatever it is that you lost.”

With a crisp snapping sound, the puzzle re-scrambled, but this time it had more tiles.

Terry poked Kevin. “You get first crack at this one.”

  
The quest gave them a break from studying and writing. Harry often wondered if he’d ever get the ink stains off his hands, but Terry claimed there was a charm that would take care of it and the house elves probably used it on the laundry. Harry had yet to see one of these mysterious beings. He’d been told that students were not allowed to summon them so that they couldn’t sneak snacks into the dorms.

Morag MacDougal, the only one out of the first years whose family had a house elf, described them as small with big eyes and pointy ears. “There’s some kind of ancient contract no one seems to understand any more, but house elves like to have a household to take care of. It’s a punishment for them to be told to leave the service of a family. Decent wizards look after their house elves and see they are well-treated and have all they need, and time free of duties. It’s a big responsibility.”

“And wizards who aren’t decent?” Harry asked.

“They don’t do some or all of those things, and treat them like slaves.” Her voice took on a stronger brogue. “It’s bad luck they are storing up for themselves. The Ministry has a department that’s supposed to look after them, but it’s hard to catch people doing bad things at home.”

Harry muttered a thanks for the information and fled. He slipped into a toilet, sure for long moments that his tasty lunch was about to reappear. The urge faded, and he splashed his face and returned to the dorm to curl up on his bed. Student clothing was supposed to be put in a hamper and it would be returned to them clean. They were expected to keep their dorms reasonably tidy and the bed linens would be changed every week. The house elves must being doing all that, for everyone in the castle. Harry had had a hard time with 4 Privet Drive though magic would have made it easier. The Dursleys would not have stood for that, not that they appreciated his hard work at all.

He got up and went to his desk, and began to write. He used Summer’s quill and nib, writing as neatly and prettily as he could. ‘Dear Hogwarts House Elves, I think you do a wonderful job taking care of Hogwarts. I greatly appreciate having clean clothes and good food to eat. I hope you are treated well here. You deserve it.’ He mulled over how to sign it, and put at last, ‘Your grateful friend, Harry Potter’.

About to put it into the hamper and hope for the best, Harry realised that here was his first letter that he could send by owl. He wondered if house elves ever got owl mail either, and perhaps would like it. He knew which tower the owls were in, but this was his first time to climb up it. Somehow, knowing there would be owls up there was no preparation for being up there with multiple owls. Their eyes, fierce and bright, stared at him, saw him. They could swivel their heads to follow him without moving their bodies.

“Hello. I need a volunteer to carry a letter. I’m not sure of the address. I want to it to go to the house elves who live here at Hogwarts. I’ve a knut if that’s enough.”

A small owl dropped down onto an empty perch near him and made an emphatic call. It had plumage speckled brown and white and round pale yellow eyes. It held out a foot. Harry nervously held out the coin on his flat hand. The owl took the coin and popped it in its beak, then offered its foot again, so he handed it the folded parchment. “I appreciate it. Good flying.”

The owl flew away. Again, Harry looked around at all those staring eyes. It was much better than having that many humans stare at him. Their eyes didn’t hide secrets. Having no further business, he left. It was a long trip back to Ravenclaw Tower, though he could have hit it with a well-thrown stone from the Owlery. Probably. Maybe.

The next morning, Harry was at breakfast as the owl post arrived. The speckled owl from last night dropped down beside him and placed the knut by his plate. It then looked pointedly at his bacon. Harry offered it pieces of bacon until it flew away, one last piece dangling from its beak.

Kevin said carefully, “Am I going mad or did you just sell bacon to an owl?”

“I gave it a knut to carry a letter for me, but I guess it really preferred food.”

“That makes sense here. It’s going to be weird going home at Christmas. I wonder if the—the non wizard world will seem mad to me after this.”

“What will hurt,” said Michael, “is not being able to use my wand. No underage wand use is allowed outside of Hogwarts.”

“See,” said Kevin, “that takes the fun out of summer right there.”

Apparently Herbology lessons always inspired the Slytherin first years to make mudblood jokes, though they kept them out of Sprout’s hearing. Kevin stolidly ignored them. It worked for the period of a class. He was taller than any of them, though Crabbe and Goyle were bigger, hulking boys whose size spoke of muscle beyond the puppy fat on their faces. Harry kept an eye out, hoping to find a distraction, but Kevin tapped his arm. “I know you did something last time. Thanks, but they aren’t worth it.”

Well, if he had to put it that way, Harry would have to leave it to him.

That evening, Anthony sat them down for a lecture on the concept of blood status and how it affected wizard society. He had notes prepared, and a pop quiz. “What is your blood status if your father is Muggleborn and your mother’s mother is Muggleborn but her father is a pure blood?”

Harry raised his hand but did not wait to be called on. “Pure what? Is there something different in the blood? Do wizards know about genes? And half what? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Part of it is tradition. There is a book about what is called the Sacred 28 families—”

“Sacred to what or who? Who wrote the book and why did the author have the right to say only these twenty-eight families are pure and sacred?”

Anthony looked pained. “It’s not up to me to explain their opinions of themselves. My magical heritage is more ancient and better documented, but because my family’s name isn’t in the list, we don’t count. My family has a legend that we are descended from King Solomon, but it’s not documented back that far, and there might be thousands of others descended from him as well. I’m considered pure blooded for my magical ancestry, but I’m proud of my family and blood status doesn’t mean anything to us other than having to cope with British wizardry.”

Terry was grinning so widely he could hardly talk. “We should have done this at supper. Merlin, Harry, you are going to get the Slytherins in such a lather.”

“All pure-bloods aren’t in Slytherin, you know. And not all of Slytherin is pure-blood,” Michael reminded them.

“I suppose Malfoy is?” Harry asked.

Michel nodded. “On the list, and proud as the white peacocks his family keeps on their estate.”

Kevin was just shaking his head. “Now I’m really worried my little sister might turn out to be a witch. I didn’t know there was this kind of racism in wizards.”

“It’s not so bad at Hogwarts. Dumbledore is a supporter of Muggles and Muggleborns.”

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve go so much reading to do just to catch up.”

Kevin said, “We should split the reading and share notes. Sound good? Oh, and if anyone has advice on what to read, speak up.”

“I have a feeling they won’t cover this at orientation,” said Harry. For all the wariness he had for books, they were a source of information he could not ignore. Perhaps he could write down the authors and make a note of their other works and possible political bent. That afternoon’s orientation had talked about other magical races in Britain and around the world. Why didn’t their children attend Hogwarts? Harry hadn’t thought to ask until now. How did house elves learn magic?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Art Appreciation 'course' is Dumbledore's solution for teaching students how to navigate Hogwarts. I think it's his kind of teaching because the students only get out of it what they put into it.


	12. Defying Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry finally gets airborne. Someone tie a string to that boy. I bet the Whomping Willow is related to the Kite-Eating tree.

_‘O heart the winds have shaken’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘A Cradle Song’_

Harry mused over Wednesday breakfast. Yesterday he had been fine all through Defence, but he still hadn’t been allowed to take flying lessons. Instead he’d been introduced to Gobstones, at the first term meeting of the Ravenclaw club. For once he was very glad to wear glasses. This was another of those wizardly blends of the animate and the inanimate that threw him off balance. Instead of questions about strategy, Harry would ask, “Do the stones enjoy squirting at people?” and “Is this a metaphor for life?” Ravenclaw or not, Gobstone players were fanatical about their sport and had a limited patience for intellectual questions (other than strategy) that got in the way of their game time. Or, and this was likely, they’d had these arguments already and had had enough. As for Harry, he took a shower after escaping much gobbed on.

“Harrrrreeeeee… haaaarrreeee….eeeee….eeeeerrrraaahh… what, he’s not listening forwards, it was worth a try.” Harry came out of his head and found Terry Boot whispering into his ear. “Sorry man, we were thinking you were lost in there. Are you actually going to eat that sausage?”

“He should,” said Kevin, lading his voice with importance. Harry shoved the sausage into his mouth.

“That sausage has been completely eaten. You showed that sausage. I’m not sure what.”

“He showed it his tonsils.”

Anthony tapped his juice glass with his spoon. “Attention, first years. We have Potions coming up and everyone needs to stay calm. Harry, you need to keep your head down. It’s such a pity Professor Snape has it in for you. I believe he’s the youngest wizard to ever earn a potions’ mastery and I want to learn from him.”

“Whether he likes it or not!” Terry Boot said helpfully.

For his second Potions lesson, Harry tried gathering shadows before entering the classroom. As soon as he entered, Professor Snape’s menacing gaze landed on him. Like Petunia’s gaze, it grudged his very existence, it searched for fuel for its anger and never failed to find it. Unlike Petunia, Snape seemed at home in shadows and accustomed to penetrating them. Harry’s shadows kept slipping away until he was defenceless once more. It was a long and weary two hours. Even Anthony’s placid calm began to wear away in the vise of that malign attention, under the needles and razors of Snape’s tongue.

He’s certainly going to a lot of trouble. Why do I mean so much to him? Harry tried to think of what he could do to make things better, but the idea of deliberately putting himself in Snape’s way made his guts clench.

Harry got some relief when a Hufflepuff boy’s cauldron overflowed. He and Anthony were able to complete their potion and turn it in. They had been among the first to complete the assignment. While Harry packed his class supplies into his school bag, he watched the other students bring their potions to Snape. As the collection of vials grew, Harry took in the subtle differences between them. If there had been a video recording of the class he would have liked to watch it to see what each student did that caused their potion to have that outcome. He wasn’t sure which of the vials he and Anthony had bottled. There was no longer a connection to his magic. He hoped he’d made it right, but he was done with it. Snape could toss it down the drain for all he cared.

“Brilliant!” Harry said out loud with a big smile out of nowhere and everyone stared at him and Snape took a point from Ravenclaw for Harry’s existence. By Snape’s dour expression, Harry’s having a good mood at the end of class wasn’t supposed to be possible.

The nice thing about Wednesday afternoon is that it was free making it easy to have a long nap in anticipation of Astronomy class. The other three houses’ first years all had Wednesday afternoon classes. Meanwhile, Ravenclaw first years were… mostly studying and writing essays.

Anthony Goldstein shared Harry’s preference for a nap, but he couldn’t just fall into bed and sleep. No, Anthony washed his face and changed into pyjamas with a dressing gown over top. Then he sat with a book in Hebrew and read for fifteen minutes before going to bed. Now, this was only the second week Harry had seen him do it, but he sensed a pattern. It looked so comfortable. Sure, it was stuffy, but Anthony gave every indication of revelling in stuffiness. Harry would do the same only he didn’t want to expose his shabby pyjamas to the light of day. Nor did he have a quilted dressing gown with satin lapels and matching slippers. All Anthony was missing was a snifter of brandy and a pipe to look like he’d stepped out of a BBC period drama.

Shabby pyjamas and all, Harry slept well. He woke with a fresh brain and attacked his Transfiguration essay in a fever of inspiration. He had picked up items that were match-like: a blade of grass, an apple’s stem, a fresh small twig, and a charred twig, and tried to make them all into needles. It was fun to describe the results and make little before-and-after drawings. His bronze nib did nice quick sketches. For the academic side, he tried to draw inferences from the lecture and textbook. Hopefully he knew what he was talking about. If he had sellotape he’d include his samples but only one of them, the transfigured grass blade, was sharp enough to go through parchment. He’d save them in case she wanted to look.

Michael and Kevin had to drag him to supper, and everyone cheered him for a proper Ravenclaw when he begged to finish just one more sentence.

“It’s the nutritive potions,” said Penelope, following behind. “A proper diet and a healthy environment are good for your brain. You already look less…”

A pause to find a word was blood in the Ravenclaw water.

“Emaciated!” “Starved!” “Bony?” “Scrawny? It’s a bit rude but legit.” “Reedy.” “I like that one.” “Spindly—I love that word.”

“Ahem,” said Penelope, “Ethereal is the word I was considering.”

“Just pinch his cheeks, that will pink them,” Lisa reached out. “He’ll look like a beefy Beater in no time.” Harry dodged and she let him. He felt looked at quite enough, thanks.

“He’s a real boy now,” said Kevin, instantly separating the Muggle-raised from the rest by who knew their Disney movies.

Harry sat at the first-year end of the table. Looking down it he saw people he knew the names of, people who had been friendly to him, and people who had helped him. He was one of them, a Ravenclaw. Kevin had the right of it: he felt like a real boy.

That night’s Astronomy lesson was on the equinoxes and how the constellations were shifting as the northern half of the Earth tilted into winter. They were going to track points in the sky and how they changed position from this side of the equinox to the other. From summer to autumn. He’d doomed himself, promising Summer he’d learn to fly. What enemy was keeping him tied down? There was no way he’d see Summer again until he could fly free and high.

Where did Summer go when she left? What did wizards believe? How could he find out? Could Summer see the stars where she was?

Harry either had to answer these questions himself or find someone he trusted to trade with who would not pull at his loose threads.

When Harry arrived back at his dorm, there was something laid across his bed that hadn’t been there before. It was of the same colours as the baggy shirt and tracksuit bottoms he wore as pyjamas. He touched it, and it was the same sort of material. It was, in fact, pyjamas made out of those clothes. He could see how that might work. Someone had disassembled them entirely then put them back together like proper clothes instead of second hand rags.

There was no note. 

He put them on and they fit with room to spare but not so much that the cloth bagged and twisted around him. The bottoms were fine once he turned up the cuffs. There was room for him to grow.

As the other boys slipped into bed and their lights went out; as their breaths evened and slowed, Harry crept to the window and sat looking at the stars again, comfortable and warm. The night blurred as he blinked and blinked again. Was this what a potion felt like, when the last ingredient was added and stirred just right so that its magic came to completion?

His head ached all the way through the next Defence class. It was bearable, but noticeable enough that Quirrel wrote him a pass to the infirmary and sent Percy Weasley to escort him. Madame Pomfrey kept him over lunch and fed him yogurt topped with granola and sliced banana. She personally oversaw his consumption of a nutritive potion and hummed with satisfaction at his weight gain. His headache subsided, and reluctantly she released him with a late pass to go to Transfiguration.

Harry would be so done with his head if he could figure out a way to live without it.

That Friday, the Flitbabblers took time out from questing to attend the Quidditch tryouts. All the Ravenclaw first years boys were there except for Anthony. Lisa, Mandy, and Morag joined them.

About two thirds of the players and would-be players were boys. Three girls were trying out for the Seeker position, which Mandy claimed was a natural for smaller and nimbler females. “Also chasers, for cooperative play.” She and Terry filled his and Kevin’s ears with all the Quidditch lore they could impart.

Of the players already on the team, Harry knew Adstan Chambers best. He was a beater, and visibly relished swatting the Bludger towards the chasers to keep them from the Quaffle.

“Can you head the Bludger or the Quaffle?” Kevin asked.

“I’ve never seen anyone head a Bludger. Not on purpose, anyway. The Quaffle, sure, but I don’t think it would happen often, the way it gets passed around. You can’t have more than one chaser in the goal area.”

Those who knew both worlds continued comparing Muggle sports with Quidditch. Harry tuned them out and watched the flying. He wanted to be up there.

The next week passed without Harry getting any head pains.

After Charms that Monday, Professor Flitwick held him back. “Good news, Harry. Madame Hooch has arranged for you to fly with the advanced class. You will get some basic instruction, but you will be attended at all times by an older student. Report to the field at the usual time of your class, but today, or if Orientation ends early you may report then. Be sure to thank her.”

Monday was September 23, and summer became autumn just before 2pm. Harry knew this from Astronomy. Yesterday he had sat under the tree where he’d met Summer, but Summer wasn’t there. Putting his left palm flat against the trunk, he said, “Merry part, Summer.” Somewhere in the day bright sky, Fomalhaut was climbing up the water poured by Aquarius. It was no wonder that wizards studied astronomy - it was also full of weird names.

That week’s Orientation was about wizard transportation methods. Harry was delighted to hear that yes, there were flying carpets. The ‘no, Britain doesn’t allow them’ part was a let down. He was also disappointed to learn he wouldn’t be taught to Apparate until he was seventeen. “Just think, that’s over half as long as we’ve been alive. It’s forever, Kevin. FOREVER.” He looked around at the people now staring at him. “Oh, sorry.” Also, he had not flown all his life, which was also FOREVER. He got increasingly nervy as Orientation wound to a close and he formed an undying hatred for everyone who asked a question.

When it was over, Harry sprang forth, faster than even Kevin’s long legs could follow. He stormed down to the flying field. The older students were already in the air, sixth and seventh years not familiar to him; he recognised no faces from Ravenclaw. There were only five of them. With Madame Hooch on the ground watching, two flew tandem broomsticks with a stretcher between them.

“Now, descend to the right — don’t tilt, slow spirals, better. Before the next term you’ll do that carrying a set of full wine goblets. There. Alright, next team, in the air.” Two other students shot up into the sky and flew around in a pattern Harry didn’t have time to figure out. “Ah, Mr. Potter, I have you at last. Come stand by this broom. My advanced classes are for students training for specialised flying techniques, such as rescue, or construction, for instance. Some of the students go on to work with testing new broom designs for the manufacturers.”

She waved over a student. “This is Milo Sorrel. He will be shadowing you. If you look like you might start to fall, he will stabilise you on the broom. For your part, you simply need to pay attention to your broom skills — and my instructions. One moment.”

She stepped away from them and called out to the students who were trying to set up a stretcher between them, fifty feet up. “You’re going to be putting an injured wizard on that stretcher, not churning butter! Communicate with each other. Team work is essential!”

Kevin arrived at the field, but he veered off to sit against the wall. He waved at Harry, then pulled a book out and started to read.

Milo Sorrel was a stocky boy with mild blue eyes and wispy, kind of feather looking, brown hair. His chin had a wisp of beard that could have just been sloppy shaving. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, Potter. Don’t mind me; it’s my job not to collide with you. I know what I’m doing.”

“Um, if it’s not rude, wouldn’t a carpet be better?” Harry asked. He nodded to the exercise going on fifty feet up. 

“In some ways, but it would be a different set of problems. Carpets handle differently. But we are experimenting—” Milo cut short what he was saying when Hooch came back.

“Let’s get started, Mr. Potter. Hold your hand over the broomstick and call it with the command ‘up’.”

“Up,” he said, and the broomstick moved smoothly up into his hand and into his magic. He mounted it when told, trying to mind fascinating golden-eyed Madame Hooch. He didn’t want any mistake of his to stop this experience. The wind freshened and he felt it flowing over him and the broomstick. It had an eagerness to it. The whistle blew and every atom of him flew. Up, up, up. Then like a feather wafting down, only slightly more heavy than air. Not stopped, not even hovering, but riding the wind in perfect balance with it like a kite holding its own string.

“Excellent, Potter, you have a feel for it. Now, I will tell you in what direction to fly, and you follow as best you can.”

He flew in circles, about ten feet up with Milo shadowing him below and behind. Madame Hooch called a pair of students to fly in front of him. He could feel the air tumble across them, to reach him all stirred up like a potion in a cauldron. The whistle called them down again, and he couldn’t bear it, couldn’t just come down like a pigeon to a crumb. He let the others drop around him, then surged up and rolled three times before righting himself as softly as a bubble rising to the surface of the water. It was worth the scolding Madame Hooch gave him. He couldn’t stop himself from smiling up into her eyes, and she broke off her words with a sigh. The others had drifted off while she held Harry back, so they were alone when she told him, “You may love the wind but the wind won’t love you back.”

Harry wandered over to Kevin, his arms outstretched as if he could grow wings by will. The wind still keened in his veins. Words were only more wind—or was it the other way around? Kevin had to grab him by the shoulders to get his attention. “C’mon, time to be on the ground.”

“Kevin. Kevin. I’m not good at people, Kevin, like that. Sorry. I never had friends before.” It was true; Summer was not his friend the way a human would be. She and Harry were blood.

“You have them now. At least, me. Come on. Have a wash up. You may fly like a bird but you don’t smell like one.”

Harry giggled himself right back into his body. He was sweaty and tired and hungry. He could wash up, eat his fill, talk to friends, then sleep in his own bed. If not for the secrets, it would be perfect.


	13. What Are We, Babies?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cauldrons to right of them,  
> Hufflepuffs to left of them,  
> Professor Snape in front of them,  
> Scorned and scolded,  
> Snaped at with jab and sneer,  
> Boldly they charged, no fear,  
> Into the Potions classroom,  
> Into the dungeon hell,  
> Rode the Ravenclaw firsties.
> 
> My deepest apologies to the spirit of Tennyson

_‘And talked of the dark folk who live in souls_   
_Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘To Some I Have Talked With By the Fire’_

  
Tuesday morning came with a hike around the grounds. It was no wilderness trek but a well marked path that veered away from the lake side and took them within sight of Hogsmeade. To the east of them, hills heaped on hills until they’d built mountains. On the way back, the guide led them on a bypath that took them up and down little hills. “I don’t want to hear complaints! You want to be stronger before the snow falls.” He grinned toothily at them and ran to the back to terrify—encourage--the stragglers.

“My uncle does fell running,” Lisa Turpin panted. “On m’mum’s side. He’s barmy.”

“Be fun on a broomstick. Swoop.” Harry’s feet were light, but his belly was homicidal. He was going to do bloody murder to the breakfast table.

Madam Pomfrey stayed him from the slaughter. She handed him his potion dose then checked him out. “You’re doing very well, Mr. Potter. Madame Hooch tells me you were fine in the air yesterday, so you may as well join your flying class today. But remember, if your head hurts, even a little, I want to know about it.”

During his breakfast massacre, Harry plotted out his day. He would finish up his essays in the morning for the afternoon classes. Then lunch, then History, then DADA, then FLYING.

It all went perfectly until lunchtime. As Harry was starting on his second sandwich, he felt the pain start. His scar burned and his stomach turned and a moment later he’d lost both lunch and consciousness.

“—understand, Albus, if you want him taken to St. Mungo’s.”

“Right now his security outweighs the threat to his health, Poppy. However, I am seeking outside assistance.”

“If it’s gossip you’re concerned about, it’s already been mentioned by the Prophet. One can’t expect students not to report to their parents, and unfortunately for Mr. Potter, anything he does is news.” That voice was closest — Flitwick, standing by his bed. Harry opened his eyes. He didn’t hurt, but he felt hollowed out. 

“I hope you feel better after your rest, Harry.” The Headmaster was at the foot of the bed.

“Yes, sir. Was anything found out about why the scar does that?”

“Not so far, Harry, but the effort is still being made.” The Headmaster smiled reassuringly at him and left.

While Harry had been unconscious, he’d missed his afternoon classes and supper. Madame Pomfrey promised to order food for him and Professor Flitwick told him that Anthony Goldstein had turned in Harry’s homework and taken notes for him in the two classes he’d missed. “Your satchel is here, with the notes and your Astronomy and Potions textbooks. Madam Pomfrey will check you over after you’ve eaten and decide if she’ll keep you here overnight again.”

“I hate being sick. It gets in the way of everything.” Harry made a face. He sounded so babyish.

“It does, doesn’t it? But all you can do is take the best care you can and get help when you need it. We are not in control of everything that happens to us, only of how we respond to it. Which is not a great help to hear, I know.” He patted Harry’s shoulder. “You’ve done well in school so far. Do not let these setbacks stop you from getting an education. It is a treasure readily available for those who make the effort. It’s not only for House Ravenclaw, but for everyone.”

Flitwick left Harry to his aggressively healthy supper. It was nearly eight so he should have time to read the upcoming chapter for both Astronomy and tomorrow morning’s Potions. Snape’s enmity, now that was a setback to reckon with. What was he like with the Gryffindor/Slytherin class? Neville would tell him. Maybe he could get hold of him before curfew.

The most likely place to find anyone was the library, and Neville was there as Harry had hoped. It was close to curfew, and Neville was already putting away his notes.

“Oh, Harry, they let you out. I hope you’re feeling better?” Neville’s smile wavered like his voice.

“I felt fine once I woke up and had supper. Can I walk with you a bit? I had a question.”

“Sure.”

“I wanted to ask how Potions is going for you. Uh,” Harry broke off seeing the woeful look on Neville’s face. “That bad, is it? Does Professor Snape have it in for you like he does for me?”

“I’m clumsy, and it’s worse when he’s looking at me. My hands shake and I forget what I’m doing and, and bad things happen. And then he scolds me like I’m the world’s biggest dunce. I probably am.” He sniffed wetly.

“If you were you’d be bad at Herbology too and you’re aces there. How about the rest of the kids in the class?”

“He’s never as hard on the Slytherins as he is on the Gryffindors. I’ll give it to Malfoy, he does seem to be actually good at Potions.”

“What about Granger? She’s a brain.”

Neville blinked at him for that, but figured out the Muggle turn of phrase quickly enough. “She’s very good but she gets on Professor Snape’s nerves.”

This was promising. “How does she do that?”

“You’ve got Charms and Transfiguration with us. It’s like always. She raises her hand whenever the teacher asks a question and she gets things right the first time. I know you said I should get her to help me, but she makes me feel so stupid.”

“And that bothers him?”

“Well sometimes she jumps in when someone else answers but gets it wrong. He doesn’t like that. Last time she was partners with me and the cauldron boiled over and he shouted at us both. And then after class she was trying to figure out where we went wrong and telling me what to do next time but I just couldn’t think about it. My brain was all fuzzy.” 

Harry felt much better about Potions and much worse about Neville. “I’m sorry I made you remember. Do you want to partner with me in Astronomy tomorrow?”

Neville’s face lit up. “I’d be glad to.”

Dawn. That time of the morning, when the sun was rising on a new minted day. Dawn. When children washed the sleep out of their eyes and combed their hair. When they donned their uniforms and prepared to do battle with the enemy. Dawn.

Breakfast started at 7 am. The Flitbabblers took to the table in formation, book bags by their sides, their eyes filled with grim purpose. Professor Snape was up at the high table. Harry didn’t even have to look to know that. He could feel the weight of that gaze. Why did this man spend so much energy thinking about him? Maybe he, too, had a purpose grim and fell. In his eyes.

Time to come up with a strategy to cope with the man. “Anthony, will you be partners with me in Potions again? I’ll understand if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll give it another try. Do you have your textbook? Let’s review the next section.” The group practised some knife techniques with the remains of their breakfast. The table knives were duller than what they used for ingredients, but they got some experience standardising the size of the cuts. Terry and Michael pointed out the section in the appendix that defined the differences between chopping, dicing, crushing, mincing, fine mincing, and the several grades of slicing.

“We ought to do this every meal. For instance, you could look at the food and classify what kind of knife work was used to prepare and present it,” Lisa suggested.

“It’s wafer thin,” said Kevin in a weird accent under his breath and giggling.

Morag shook her head. “It’s probably done with magic. House elves are excellent at domestic magic.”

“I didn’t think about them doing the cooking, too,” said Harry.

Morag gave him the ‘I-forgot-Muggles-raised-you’ look. “Did you think Filch did it?”

“He loves his kitty but I wouldn’t eat his cooking, given the choice,” said Mandy.

Harry would not be diverted. “Why don’t we ever see them?”

“Students aren’t supposed to ask the house elves to do things for them so they are supposed to stay out of sight. Otherwise everyone would be snacking in their dorm and in the library.”

“Mmm, breakfast in bed,” Michael said wistfully.

Kevin shook his head. “Just when I think I’m getting to know the magical world, I’m back at square one.”

Anthony brightened. “Do you play chess? You haven’t played until you’ve played wizard’s chess. I’ll show you tonight.”

“I play,” said Su Li, “I’ve got my own pieces.”

“We’d better get off to Potions. Double class, ladies and gentlemen, so don’t forget to use the facilities. Who wants to ask Professor Snape to be excused?”

No one was up for it, but Harry kind of wanted to know what would happen—if Snape’s black eyes would narrow and glitter brighter than the razor words falling from his tongue. It would be epic. But he only kind-of-wanted.

They were in fact the first to reach the classroom. Anthony drew himself up as straight as he could and swept back his blond bang. “Ladies, gentlemen, it is time. Remember: vivamus moriendum est.” _*(Let us live, since we must die)_

“So cheerful,” said Terry Boot. “How about: quid infantes sumus?” _*(What are we, babies?)_

“Et cetera!” said Harry, cheerful in his Latin lack and walked in first. He went to the right front table and took a seat on the aisle where he would be most exposed to Snape. He got his text book and fresh parchment out for note-taking. He never used Summer’s quill in class, but wrote with it only in the dorm to help him learn to write better. He had improved, if one counted making his own set of Rorshach blobs. He wrote the date at the top of the sheet. Hmm, that one looked like Snape’s profile.

Something twinged in his head, like one of those games where ball bearings had to be manoeuvred into tiny divots and an incautious move made the ones in divots roll free again. That’s what his thoughts felt like just now. He looked about warily, not ready to cross gazes with Snape yet. The teacher began giving instructions in his ‘why have these dunderheads been visited upon me?’ voice. Anthony kicked his ankle to make sure he was alert. Harry wished he had two brains so one could focus and the other could drift along and think whatever thoughts came to mind.

Snape paused in his lecture. His glance fleeted over the classroom, then swung back to the Ravenclaw side. His eyes narrowed, but whatever he observed he chose as yet not to comment on. Harry did not dare look over his shoulder. He had to trust that his house-mates were carrying out their tactic to conquer Potions. Snape had written a potion recipe on the board. Anthony copied it down with his superior penmanship. Harry found references to the potion in the text. Together they reviewed the process and plotted out what should happen when. Harry prepped the cauldron and cleared the workspace while Anthony retrieved the ingredients from the cupboard. Harry laid them out in order. Anthony started the fire under the cauldron since Harry was not used to doing it wizard style. He was good with a knife, though Snape’s presence made his hands unsteady. As they had arranged, when that happened Harry would pause to measure the quantity. Letting a blade slip was a great sin in Snape’s view by the way he would talk wistfully about expecting the violator to eventually cut off a hand at the neck. Now he was hovering over Harry as if hoping to witness it.

“Professor Snape, would you come look at this please?” Kevin stuck his neck out, sacrificially offering up a doubt that an ingredient on his table was of sufficient quality. Snape’s biting lecture about the carelessness of taking it from the cupboard in the first place was followed by useful advice about the specific ingredient. Anthony wrote it down, a fiendish grin trying to form on his lips. He had to conceal it. With words alone, Snape could wipe the smile off Mona Lisa’s face. He could sneer for England. A frantic whisper of quill on parchment rose up on the Ravenclaw side then was joined by the Hufflepuffs in a scholarly susurrus.

Harry switched with Anthony to take over the stirring. One thing they had done at the start was to figure out how deep the rod could go in the cauldron without scraping the bottom, which the book listed as a novice error. They’d had to measure separately, using their own fingers as they were unsure of how marking the rod might affect its function. After his experience on the broom, Harry was deeply interested in the turbulence caused by stirring. Anthony softly coaching him, Harry counted the stirs. “One…one…Two…two…Three…three…Half and reverse one…” Harry hoped he’d remembered the halfway point correctly. He was in the shadow of Snape, and it was an icy, clutching shadow. He locked his wobbling knees. “And withdraw.” Harry pulled out the rod and staggered back, bumping into Anthony, who added, “Ow.”

“Five points from Ravenclaw for oafish clumsiness and injuring a classmate.” Having counted coup, Snape moved away.

Harry turned to Anthony, who was making a note and blinking rapidly, a tear oozing down his cheek. “Alright?”

“Just a quill to the eye.” His one eye kept blinking while the other one was steady on his notes.

They kept at it until the potion was complete. Putting off bottling it, they checked their work by using the colour shade and consistency guidelines in the textbook appendix. “I’m glad they have something to go by, but aren’t colours a little subjective? How do you tell the difference between ‘gluey’ and ‘sticky’?”

Harry had jinxed himself. The dark lord of the dungeon was upon him. “Patience, practice, and perception, Potter. All virtues for which you’ve shown little aptitude,” Snape snaped at him. His ‘p’s were individually crafted packets of disdain. “Stop dawdling and bottle your potion. I’ve other business besides waiting on you.” The potion master’s voice lowered to tones of exquisite insinuation. “Brewing for the infirmary, for instance.”

“Yes, sir,” said Anthony, moving past Harry with his ready labelled vial. Harry carefully printed his own label, and didn’t bottle his potion until Snape was terrorising a Hufflepuff. Then he took his potion up front, and joined Anthony in cleaning up their station before escaping.

“Ugh. I wish someone could bottle me up and carry me to Astronomy,” Harry said once they were well away.

They all needed to visit the toilets after the long class. Those who finished first lingered waiting for the rest of the Ravenclaws. Even those who hadn’t been in on the plan knew that something had been up. Harry spoke up first, “Thanks for the help. I don’t know why Professor Snape has it in for me, but I don’t want it to cause problems for anyone else.”

“Points from Ravenclaw concern all of us. You can’t help Professor Snape’s attitude.”

“Perhaps Professor Flitwick could step in?” suggested Padma.

“Professor Snape has a reputation of being hard on all the houses except his Slytherins,” said Morag. “Be glad you didn’t sort into Gryffindor, Potter. I wouldn’t go whinging to Professor Flitwick. You’d just make Snape angrier.”

That bit of recklessness in Harry whispered an angry Snape would be magnificent in his fury. “I wish I could make my p’s pop like that and not sound like an idiot. ‘Patience, practice, and perception, Potter’,” he tried repeating but with far more spit and far less bile than the eloquent professor. Everyone’s heads jerked around to make sure that the man himself wasn’t looming over them.

“You’ve got a death wish, Harry,” said Lisa. “Hey, why don’t we practice over lunch again? I thought that was a great idea. If only the knives were sharper.”

“It was Anthony’s idea.” Su Li said. Anthony looked pleased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was my favorite chapter to write.


	14. Fomalhaut Ascending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry Potter discovers that though it is no longer Summer, he still has otherworldly friends.

_‘I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

One day turned to another, taking on familiar shapes. He stopped having headaches in Defence. Snape remained his caustic self. Harry ate pumpkin pie for the first time. The boys solved another layer of their dorm puzzle and Anthony answered the new riddle. The Flitbabblers captured the castle one portrait at a time. One might never know, within the stone walls, that summer was gone and autumn was here.

In the first week of October, Harry began to layer himself up for Astronomy. It was already winter-y at the top of the tower. When Harry took out his cloak, something tumbled out of his wardrobe. It was a round, squishy blue object that turned out to be a hat with a scarf and half-finger mittens tucked inside it, all in deep blues with stripes of rich varied browns. The items were his size. The yarn was a fuzzy the way that old yarn got, but otherwise they seemed new. This was like what had happened with his pyjamas, only he didn’t own anything made of yarn like this that could be remade. There was something fairytale in it that made him suspect the house elves.

For tonight’s lesson, Professor Sinistra had them find Fomalhaut, well to the south. “This is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. Its name means ‘mouth of the whale’. Though it can be mostly easily found by following a line from Pegasus, it is also below Aquarius, and our forebears saw in the sky the water-bearer pouring water down upon the fish. It is best seen at this time of year and some call it the star of Autumn. If we were much further north we would never be able to see it.”

Harry peered through the telescope at the bright star. Listening to Sinistra, he imagined it as the mouth of the great fish, rising from the water to catch a fly and then sink down, down into the underworld. He stepped quickly back, bumping Neville. “Sorry, your turn.”

He looked out with his naked eyes at the horizon, glasses tucked away. These patterns were the tilt of the earth, not the motion of the stars. Summer was probably not in Australia. He had never figured out how to ask Summer why he always found her in trees. Except when she might have been birds. What kind of magic was the study of trees? Herbology? Maybe the advanced students worked with trees. His glance fell on Neville peering through the telescope. Now here was a source of broad knowledge about magical plants. But what could he do for Neville in return; what could he give to balance his taking?

  
Up here under the stars, he could feel time passing. The planets and the constellations would dance and never miss a step waiting for him to figure out what to do. What did he want to do? Would he know in seven years? How was he supposed to get ready to be an adult by being a kid? It was a completely different life. In Muggle school they’d shown a film of a factory, how the pieces moved on conveyor belts and were punched and stamped and hammered. No one asked the metal if it wanted to be nuts and bolts. If he had to figure it out for himself, why did they act like he was doing it wrong?

“Harry, are you okay?” Neville shoulder bumped him. 

“I’m thinking too much. Did I miss any education?”

“Seamus Finnegan nearly fell off the tower. I guess he learnt not to lean over so far.”

“I’ll make a note of that.”

Back in his dorm, Harry admired his new mitts once more before taking them off. The knit wear and the pyjamas spoke of clever re-use and craftsmanship, of refurbishing. Existing things had been unmade and remade. Perhaps the yarn for the knit set came from some Hogwarts lost and found bin, or from a discarded tapestry. His pyjamas were unique in all the world; he would not have traded them for velvet trimmed with ermine.

He wrote a letter. The next morning, he mailed it before going down to breakfast.

 _I love my new clothes. Will I ever get to meet you? — Harry Potter_.

The day before Halloween, Harry Potter was at lunch when he found his note folded under the plate in front of him. It wiggled like fingers beckoning from around a corner. He tucked it up inside his sleeve and excused himself from the Flitbabblers’ Potions post-mortem. Going out into the corridor, he pulled the note out and looked it over. The parchment had been folded so that his words were on the outside. There was nothing new written on the inside. He folded it again, and it tugged at him, like a hand tucked into his pulling him along. Harry followed the urging of the note. It led him down some stairs and along a corridor, then stopped before a still-life painting of lush fruits strewn on a table.

The note leapt out of his hand and tickled the pear. The section of wall became a door that swung open. Within were the Hogwarts kitchens, for the singular noun was not enough. On the opening of the door, a tableaux became visible. House elves in all their short glory froze in place instead of chopping and stirring and kneading and grating and scrubbing and polishing and sweeping. An elf knelt before an open oven door, its face cast half in shadow and half in light so that one huge eye stared at him. They had such big eyes; they all did.

A visibly older elf clapped his hands and everyone went back to work, though their faces kept swivelling towards him. Some of them bodily pirouetted as they passed him. The old elf came towards him. He was clad in a towel that had the Hogwarts badge on the corner, pinned at the shoulder with a big brass pin. “Welcome, Harry Potter, welcome. Harry Potter liked his luncheon, yes? Any complaints? More treacle tart?”

Between one blink of his eyes and another, a flurry of elves had produced a table, a low four-legged stool, and a slice of treacle tart. One elf was left artistically daubing it with a fluffy heap of whipped cream. She laid a spoon carefully angled to make it tempting to take hold. Harry sat, feeling a little dazed. “That’s very kind of you — of you all.” He picked up the spoon and had a taste to show willing. It was still warm and the whipped cream was still cool. “I’ve never met a house elf before. How should I address you?”

The elderly elf polished the edges of his large ears. “I is called Oddment, Master Harry Potter, sir.”

Harry played with his whipped cream to gain time. This sounded like the name game he had played with Summer. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I would be glad if you were able to just call me Harry. Are you in charge?”

“The senior elf for cookery is I, but the Headmaster is in charge.”

“He tells you what to cook? He… chooses the menu?”

Oddment giggled, “No, Sir Harry, the Headmaster is being too busy! Tweak chooses the food from the market.”

“That must be a lot of work to feed so many people. So Tweak chooses and the Headmaster pays for it?”

“Crimple pays for it. She is having special training for talking to goblins.” Oddment shook his head. “Terrible they are, goblins. The Headmaster gave her a writing for them.”

Harry was beginning to see a pattern here. As far as he could tell, the Headmaster simply gave them authorisation to do what they knew how to do perfectly well. “I’m so glad that you invited me to visit, Oddment. May we talk for a few minutes? Perhaps you’d like to sit down with me and share this tart?”

Elves within earshot let out soft ooOOooos.

Oddment dabbed his eyes with the corner of his towel toga. “Harry Potter Harry is too kind. No one ever sent us a letter before.” He made no move to sit.

“Perhaps you didn’t know, but I have been living with Muggles since my parents died. I have a lot to learn about the wizarding world and the magical races. I’ve heard of house elves living with families. Is it like that for you here?” Harry put his glasses away and looked at Oddment as he would at Summer. The more he looked at him, and at the other elves, he could see some of that same flavor of otherness that Summer had. And though their tasks were menial, he could see a casual and confident use of magic everywhere. Nor was there a waving of sticks or chanting of spells.

“No single family needs as many house elves as Hogwarts! But in the summer it is dull. So few to feed, so little laundry to wash.” All the house elves sighed.

“You could experiment with recipes? I don’t know what all house elves do. Do you get holidays? Do you, um, uh…” Harry suddenly doubted this course of thought. “Get married and have little elves? I hope that’s not too personal. We’ve just met. I don’t want to be rude.”

“Pat-a-pie!” Oddment called out, and a house-elf with one wispy blonde curl on her head and a rounded belly appeared. “Show the Harry your little barm-cake.” 

Pat-a-pie beamed and came closer. “See, am almost done.” She cupped an arm around the swell of her middle. “Please touch, please, great Harry Potter.”

Harry put his hand out and let Pat-a-pie guide his palm against the bump. Her eyes were soft brown pools like chocolate pudding. Something moved under her skin and he caught his breath. “That’s brilliant,” he said, the words wheezing out of his choked throat. It was brilliant: not shadows, but glows, faint like the reflection of candles in a window, flowed between them. “May your child never hunger.”

“May your hearth ever kindle.” Pat-a-pie whispered, then put her hands over her face, peeking at him through the fingers. She was blushing all over her head.

Having exchanged blessings, it was time to go. Harry knew this was proper. To say too much more would weaken what had been said.

“It was wonderful to meet you all. Good day, Senior Cookery Elf Oddment.”

Oddment puffed up. “Harry the Great Harry Potter is always welcome here.”


	15. On This Day In History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry pays the cost of not reading modern history books.

_‘He was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time, thinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the mountains’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘Stories of Red Hanrahan’_

On this day in history, October 30th, 1991, Harry Potter stepped on Hermione Granger’s foot. To begin with, let it be said it was an accident.

“Ow! Mind your feet!”

“Oh, sorry. I should have looked before I backed up,” Harry said contritely to whatever girl it was.

“You should.” She sniffed, and jerked her chin up, glaring at him. The red lights they used to help their night sight glowed on her face.

“It was an accident, Granger. Were you trying to get over here?” Harry shifted, paused, looked back, then moved to make space for her.

“Yes. Thanks. Sorry.” She slipped past him and put her hands on the wall, staring out into the night.

She turned her face to the side, letting the shadows fall on it.

“Neville will be over in a moment — we’re working together.”

Neville brought the star chart over and he and Harry began to try to find Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, talking quietly together. Neville glanced over at Hermione, but didn’t speak to her.

After a while, Hermione said out of the dark, “Your left support wobbles every time you adjust the eyepiece.” Then she left, careful not to joggle the telescope as she passed.

Harry murmured to Neville, “What’s up with her?”

“She’s having a hard time of it. She tries to get people to study harder and they don’t want her telling them what to do. And then there’s arguing.”

“Granger doesn’t strike me as someone who’d give up when she thinks she’s right.”

“She’s probably right but sometimes she makes you want to be wrong.” Neville grumped, then looked around. “She means well,” he added.

Harry was glad he could hide his surprise in the dark. If mild Neville was saying this, Granger was probably raising the roof in Gryffindor.

On the next day in history, October 31st, 1991, Hermione Granger did not hide her light under a barrel. “Lumos Nox Lumos Nox Lumos Nox Lumos Nox Lumos Nox,” she chanted like a magic machine gun. Her wand flashed on and off until she ran out of breath.

“Seventeen in a row. Well done, Miss Granger, 5 points to Gryffindor.”

Behind her, Finnegan, Weasley, and Thomas pretended to be blinded. “Hermione Granger, human light-switch,” Finnegan muttered. Most of the class didn’t get the Muggle joke, but Granger blushed a dull red.

Harry was having trouble with this particular set of charms. His Lumos, instead of sitting tranquilly at the tip of his wand, flit about. On its own, a Lumos would fade in a few minutes if the wizard did nothing else. So why have Nox to counter it?

“Nox,” he said firmly, and a shadow formed and danced about with the light.

Flitwick came down to look at it. “See if you can do it again, Mr. Potter.”

“Nox,” said Harry, and another adorable little shadow ball appeared. The two shadows whirled around each other then extruded shadow tendrils and combined into one slightly bigger and slightly darker shadow.

“Now, Lumos, if you please?” said Professor Flitwick, sounding a little unsettled in his courtesy.

“Lumos!” A dot of light appeared then combined with the other light.

“Hmm, you seem to have a little extra flourish in your wand movement. I don’t want to stifle your creativity, Mr. Potter, but control is important.” The light glinted off his spectacles. “You have History of Magic as your last class, yes? Come see me after that. We’re due a chat anyway. Until then, practice being mindful of your intent in casting. Your result is idiosyncratic, but if you like the result, you must understand it and how to do it at will.”

“Yes, Professor.” Harry watched his glow and his shadow dance together. It felt right to gently waver his wand. Was he feeding them? Were they them or were they him, some projection of him? The first years were supposed to start taking Magical Theory in the second term, and Harry really needed to save a list of his questions. He set his wand down, and watched as the glow and the shadow fell into each other and slowly faded. Harry ran his wand through his fingers, feeling unsettled. Maybe it was the Latin words. So strange — why words anyway? Surely Chinese wizards didn’t cast with Latin words. Were there Chinese wizards? Did they cast different spells?

Harry did his best to focus in Transfiguration. To him, this was the most perilous of classes, confirmed by Professor McGonagall’s constant warning speeches. To perform a transfiguration spell, he had to carefully evaluate his intent and include his respect for the original nature of the object of the transformation into how he intended to impose change upon it. This took him a long time to settle in his mind before actually doing the spell.

Once she understood his qualms, Professor McGonagall showed more patience in helping him though she had her limit. Today he told her he was scheduled to meet with Professor Flitwick to discuss similar problems in Charms, which won him a reprieve from being prodded.

Later on this day in history, in History of Magic Harry Potter threw Professor Binns off his lesson plan by asking if he would be covering the origins of magic and magic history of other places besides the British Isles and Europe.

“James Potter, you will be quiet or I will take points from Gryffindor!” Professor Binns said indignantly, seeming less transparent than usual. The entire class fell so silent that it woke up Crabbe from his nap. Malfoy elbowed him to keep him quiet.

The knowing of things Harry did not know tsunami’d around him, stranding him on a peak surrounded by circling eyes.

Binns went back to lecturing.

Harry Potter grabbed his book bag and fled.

(On this day in History, points got taken from Gryffindor because of a dead man.)

Fifth year Slytherins and Hufflepuffs filed out of the Charms classroom. Harry got to his feet. He’d kept to the side of the door that the fewest students would turn to, but fifth year students were enormous and the Slytherins of that class bristled with adolescent menace. Best to be on his toes. He waited for them all to go and then peeked into the room. Flitwick was just coming to the door. “Here already, Mr. Potter?”

“Professor Binns mistook me for my father, and… “ And it was weird again, as Flitwick stopped in his tracks and Harry found himself back on that peak and unable to speak.

His House Head took a deep breath. “Come along to my office, Mr. Potter. “I’ll order up some afternoon tea.”

Flitwick’s office was tidy but cluttered with bewitched objects kept in big glass fronted cabinets or little side tables. Harry settled into a well-stuffed armchair and distracted himself watching a butterfly perched on a little china box with a handle on the side. Its wings moved in slow beats as if it was sunning itself.

“Push the handle; it goes in circles,” Flitwick told him. 

Harry rotated the brass handle. The butterfly rose from its perch as music began to play. After a few bars, the music changed and so did the butterfly, into another species. Harry kept cranking the handle. The music that played sometimes sounded familiar to him, but he didn’t know the names of the pieces, or of the butterflies. One lovely piano tune was accompanied by a large butterfly with wide pale green wings that had four spots, and a graceful swallow tail.

“Ah, Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’, with the luna moth. One of my favourites.”

“It’s beautiful. Why do the tunes only last a short time… oh. Because so do butterflies.”

“Quite right. A poignant conceit.” At Harry’s evident confusion, the Professor explained, “Poignant is a word to describe things that can make you sad. And here conceit is used in a secondary meaning, a fanciful metaphor.” Here he glanced carefully at Harry, who was glad he already knew what a metaphor was as he was feeling rather ignorant at the moment.

Harry had stopped turning the handle, so the luna moth perched on the box when the music paused. Flitwick tapped his wand on the table and a tray appeared with a tea pot and some biscuits.

“I had not thought about today being Halloween and what that meant. I should have thought to speak with you, forgive me. It must be hard for you, when every one else is celebrating.” He reached for the tea pot.

Harry paused in reaching for a biscuit, then sat back. “I don’t understand, Professor, but I think I’m the only one who does not. People always seem to know things about me that I don’t know.”

Flitwick nearly dropped the tea pot; he set it back down. “No one has told you? I really do not understand this state of affairs. But as it falls to me to explain this, we must both bear up as best we can. Ten years ago tonight, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named murdered your parents.”

Cold shivers ran up and down Harry’s back. Flitwick poured tea into the cups. “There was such joy that night; people cast off their fear and danced in the streets. And when they knew that it was you who saved them, somehow impossibly saved them, they toasted your name. I was among them. But you were just a small child who had lost his parents.” He added honey and milk to a cup, then handed it to Harry. “Sip that; you need the warmth.”

“I didn’t know. About Halloween.” Harry cradled the cup in his hands. It was a little too hot but his hands felt icy and it helped. “Or my parents, until Hagrid told me. Aunt Petunia said they died in a car crash.” Finally he took a sip of the tea. It wasn’t what he expected, it was a spiced herbal tea that needed the honey and milk to tame it. “Dudley, my cousin, liked to go out in costume to get candy, but they never let me.” The tea sat warmly on his unsettled insides. “I’m glad now.”

His dorm mates had been looking forward to the Halloween feast. So had he, until now. The awful thing was, that he could understand why they would celebrate. That’s what you did when a war was over, even though people had died to make it happen. But to go to the feast, to eat with everyone looking at him, knowing… “I’d rather not go to the feast. Is that all right, Professor?”

“Certainly, Mr. Potter. We can dine in my rooms—I do not find myself in a festive mood either.”

For the rest of tea time, Flitwick chatted to Harry about his essays for Charms and other essays. “For you first years, part of the first term is spent assessing what you need to improve your skills. No need to be embarrassed, Mr. Potter. You are not the first student and far from the only student this year to have had a sketchy education prior to arriving at Hogwarts.”

Harry wriggled in his chair a little, trying to fight down his resentment. It wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t fair, but that’s how it was. This was what he always had wanted, for a teacher to notice he was struggling and help him.

“How do you like the Magical Orientation presentations? This is only the second year they have been offered. I noticed you weren’t originally scheduled, and I’m glad you had the good sense to see they might be useful to you. I think we should encourage all first years to attend. Sometimes even students brought up in magical households can miss out if their parents aren’t of an educational bent.”

“It was amazing to hear Merlin was real. Everyone knows about King Arthur. You get the stories in school and on the telly and the cinema even though they think it’s all made up.”

“Some legends are greater and older than the Statute of Secrecy. We wizards live with Merlin’s legacy, so he has never faded into myth, even though we have so few historical details.” Flitwick sat back in his chair, his face shadowed though he still smiled.

“I wish it was all year. And the Magical Theory class. Why wait? I don’t think our class schedule is very full.”

“The Orientation is new, and there was some resistance to instituting it — there are always some who resist change. But the Magical Theory class has always started second term for first years, as we believe that it is useful to teach you some basic practical skills before introducing you to the theory behind them. We hope to awaken curiosity — in your case this has been most successful, has it not?” Flitwick hid his smile behind his tea cup, but it was in his voice all the same.


	16. Drinking Chardonnay Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry expects to have Halloween supper with Professor Flitwick and learns more about his head of house. As one might expect, Halloween is not a lucky night for Harry Potter.

  
_‘I went out to the hazel wood,_   
_Because a fire was in my head,_   
_And cut and peeled a hazel wand,_   
_And hooked a berry to a thread;_   
_And when white moths were on the wing,_   
_And moth-like stars were flickering out,_   
_I dropped the berry in a stream_   
_And caught a little silver trout.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’_

Harry went back to his dorm to drop off his book bag and let the others know he wasn’t attending the feast. No one asked why, not even Kevin, which meant that everyone knew. Maybe he should give up and read one of those books that claimed to tell what had happened to his parents. But what if they were wrong and he got the wrong things into his head? Did they explain why he got left with his relatives? Why he had been let to grow up knowing nothing about his parents and magic?

No one had told Flitwick. That was obvious as it was that Flitwick now knew there were secrets he didn’t know, and he was troubled by that. It was tempting to confide in his teacher, but once Harry started telling secrets he would lose control of who knew what and who said what. Which made it obvious why there were secrets. To speak of Summer, to tell others of those meetings, of their kinship, of her many shapes, of her cloudy sky eyes… those memories were theirs and theirs alone. What would the wizards do, call her a magical creature and try to regulate her? Maybe he was wrong, but he was still sure that beings like Summer were rarely seen even by wizards.

Maybe it was just his blood, but Harry was different. And in his way, so was Professor Flitwick. Tonight they would be different together.

Tidied up and hair combed so that it was wild but not tangled, Harry arrived at Professor Flitwick’s quarters. It was much less cluttered than his office, and the furniture was all small scale. A small table was laid for supper. It was so low that instead of chairs, it had plump cushions. Professor Flitwick was dressed with the same care for which he appeared for supper in the Great Hall, so Harry was glad he’d put on a fresh shirt and tie.

“Good evening, Professor Flitwick. I’m honoured to join you for supper.” Some days it was hard to get around saying thank-you but still be thankful. He was shy of the words that tripped so quickly off other people’s tongues. What if one day he was careless and said them to Summer? 

“The pleasure is mine, Mr. Potter. I rarely have guests in my quarters. Let me hang your robe up for you.” With a delicate fillip of Flitwick’s wand, Harry’s robe floated off his shoulders and onto a hook. Harry hardly noticed as he stared at the tip of the moving wand. It was like writing; Flitwick had lovely penmanship as well.

“Professor, does it help to work on grip strength? The fingers, the wrist? For control?”

“Steadiness is the prime requirement for precision wand movements. Too tight a grip leads to jerkiness. Strength is developed in the practice of steadiness. So, yes, keeping up a healthy musculature will be beneficial.”

“I was thinking that it was like writing.”

Flitwick smiled. “A point to Ravenclaw. That is one reason why wizards still write with quills, though few stop to think about it.”

They sat down at Flitwick’s table. He tapped it lightly with his wand, and platters of food appeared. At each seat was a bowl of creamy soup, a bowl of salad greens, and a plate of salmon with a pale sauce drizzled in zigzags over it. In the middle of the table was a basket of bread and a dish of butter. At Harry’s place was a glass of water, a glass of pumpkin juice, and a wine glass that had an inch of pale golden wine in it. There was barely more than that in Flitwick’s glass.

“You may try a little wine with your fish if you are curious, Mr. Potter. When you have a bite of salmon, enjoy the flavor, then have a tiny sip of wine.” He looked down at his plate with satisfaction. “I caught this myself. Fly-fishing is one of my hobbies. Like many Charms spells, casting a lure takes a deft wrist and precise control.”

Harry did as he was bid. He had never had salmon, let alone wine, and it was less fishy than he expected. The wine had a taste that he couldn’t pin down. It first touched down on his tongue with a hint of green apple, then softened and — dried?

“Is it magic wine?”

Flitwick chuckled. “All you see here could appear on a table in a nice Muggle restaurant. It’s quite a Scottish menu: leek and tattie soup and fresh broiled Highlands salmon. The wine is a slightly oaky Chardonnay. All you need is enough to wet your tongue and cut through the creaminess. Don’t forget your salad, either, and every time you have a sip of wine, also have a sip of water or juice. Do you like it?”

Prompted by Flitwick’s glance towards his water and juice, Harry took a sip of water. “I don’t know if I like the taste of it as a taste but it is interesting how it changes. What is fly-fishing like?”

Flitwick’s face lit up like a Quidditch chaser who scored a goal. “It is pure sport. One goes out to the river or lake before dawn, with waders and a flotation belt. Guided by experience, you slip as quietly as possible into a likely spot. The light of dawn spreads across the water until you can hardly tell horizon from shore. You cast, dropping your lure lightly onto the surface after the fashion of an insect landing or a small fish rising to an insect. Circles of rings spread out from the impact, then the water smooths to satin once more. You wait. You must hold your fishing rod just so, lightly enough to feel if a fish is nibbling at your lure, but firmly enough to occasionally twitch it to attract attention. Your awareness is exquisitely tuned to that little tug of a fish taking the lure. The fishing line itself is delicate, and when a fish runs with the lure, you must play it so that you tire the fish without putting so great a pressure on the line that it breaks.” His eyes glistened and he dabbed at them with a handkerchief under his glasses.

Harry hadn’t expected this sermon. If this was a sport, it was the opposite of Quidditch. “No magic at all?”

“That’s part of the purity of the sport. If all I wished was to catch a fish to eat, the effort would be wasted. A hungry man does not fish for sport. However, it would depend on how one defines magic. If you mean the magic that is taught here, no. But magic in the broader sense, as even Muggles might speak of it, is not to be scorned. Magic is a transformative power, and is rightly counted among the arts.”

“Like music, as the Headmaster said?”

“Yes. Did he indeed?”

“At the welcoming feast, after the school song.”

“That stuck in your head, did it?” Flitwick sounded pleased.

As Harry was reaching for a piece of bread, a bell rang, two sharply insistent chimes.

Professor Flitwick set his fork down and stood up. “That’s an alarm.” He held his hand up to keep Harry silent, and listened. So did Harry, who heard nothing.

“We should join the others in the Great Hall. As for you—” he paused for a breath. “Stay close by me. I wish to know exactly where you are.”

“Yes, Professor.” Harry guessed that Flitwick was tempted to leave him here. As tasty as his supper had proved to be and as little of it as he had had, Harry wanted to know what was happening. He was glad to follow.

Flitwick cast a charm across his table. A whip of his wand sent Harry’s robe flying to him from the hook.

Hogwarts was silent around them until they came to the stairs. There was Gryffindor House, all of it, coming up on the way to their common room. A tall girl with a prefect badge hurried over to Flitwick. “Oh, Professor, there you are. You’re wanted down in the Great Hall.” Her soft voice was so heavily weighted with its Irish accent that Harry could hardly understand her.

“Miss MacDermott, what is going on?”

She took a breath to calm herself and spoke more clearly. “Professor Quirrell came into the hall, said there was a troll in the dungeon, and passed out. We were sent back to our common rooms.”

“Thank you, carry on.”

She nodded to them and turned back to make sure no one was heading anywhere other than Gryffindor. Professor Flitwick plunged into the oncoming river of red and gold and headed down the stairs. As small as he was, the students moved aside automatically for the Professor. Harry had to struggle with the turbulence of students making room for his Head of House. He quickly lost sight of him, but figured Flitwick was heading to the ground floor and he’d catch up, or run out of Gryffindors. Then he ran into Neville, or rather, Neville ran into him, almost tackling him to the wall.

“Harry, what are you doing there? Was that Flitwick? Where were you? Was Hermione Granger with you?”

“Huh?” said Harry, still catching his breath. “Following Flitwick, yes, his quarters, no. Wasn’t she at the feast?”

“She wasn’t at Transfiguration, remember? Or at Flying. You remember, they were teasing her in Charms and she was upset. I told Percy Weasley, and he passed it on, but the prefects have to get us all up into Gryffindor.”

“C’mon, Flitwick will listen.” Harry bolted down the stairs, making his own path now, and assuming Neville followed by the smoke trail of ‘Sorry!’ he was leaving behind him.

Flitwick had got well ahead of them. When they reached the ground floor corridor that led towards the Great Hall, they saw him hustling along, his wand raised. He stopped at the opening of a side passage, peered down it, then gestured with his wand. As Harry and Neville caught up to him, he was smiling. “I locked it in the toilet. That should—”

A piercing scream interrupted Flitwick and he turned pale.

“Hermione!” cried Neville and rushed past, Harry following him as if dragged in his wake.

Their longer legs carried them past Flitwick’s protest. Neville reached the door and turned the key standing in the lock; Harry slipped in as soon as the opening was wide enough.

He was stopped in his tracks by the stench. It was as if he’d hit a wall with just his nose; a meat thick smell like a garbage heap in a sewer in the sun. The troll turned back towards the door, the tip of the club in its grip whacking into sinks and sending shards of ceramic flying. Beyond it was Hermione Granger, crouched back into a stall and low on the floor where she’d tried to crawl away. Her hair half covered her face and one eye stared out fearful and leaking tears down her cheek.

“RAAAaaaarrrr?” Neville shout-squeaked. The troll lifted its club, pivoting towards them.

“Wingardium leviosa!” Flitwick said behind them. The club lifted into the air and the troll gazed up in confusion. “Miss Granger, come here! Miss Granger!”

The girl twitched in place, her hands and feet scrabbling at the floor as she tried to collect herself. The sounds drew the troll’s attention; it turned back and the terrible scream blasted out of her again.

Harry’s head swam. All was so slow and so fast. Neville darted past him towards Hermione; Flitwick shouted for them to get out and put himself in front of Harry. There was a little bald spot in his carefully groomed hair.

Flitwick’s wand cut into the air; a spell left it.  
The troll was still turning. Its foot slid on the wet floor and it staggered aside.  
The spell missed.  
The troll grabbed out, one hand crushed a sink. The other brushed Neville sending him stumbling into a stall door.

“Wingardiumleviosa!” spat off Harry’s tongue like the water shooting out of the broken sink.

The troll shot up like it was the feather; shot up like it was riding a fast broom. Its head smacked into the ceiling. Plaster cracked and started to fall in chunks.

“Protego!” said Flitwick, and the chunks were deflected away. The troll dropped to the floor, limp now but still assaulting them with the ceaseless hot reek of its body.

Harry stared at it, hardly aware now of the others moving in the room. The troll was awful, terrifying, glorious, and sad. He hoped it wasn’t dead. It was magical.

Hands landed on his shoulders from behind. More voices spoke as he was pulled out into the corridor. Someone shook him and slapped his face hard enough to sting, enough to set his glasses askew. The same hand straightened the glasses and fell away.

Harry’s wits took charge again and he found himself staring at the black monolith of Snape. Snape still had one hand on his shoulder, but his attention was elsewhere.

“Is it all right?”

No one replied.

Neville and Hermione walked through the door holding on to each other. McGonagall was behind them. “How’s Mr. Potter?” she asked Snape.

“He doesn’t seem to be injured; he appears to be only a little more dazed than usual.”

Professor Flitwick’s voice piped up from the rear. “Might be magical exhaustion. He levitated that troll into the ceiling.”

“Is it all right?” Harry asked again, hearing his own thready voice like it was someone else’s.

“It’s well stunned. I took the opportunity to secure it — mountain trolls have very thick skulls, and it shall wake up presently. Minerva, will you see Mr. Potter up to Madame Pomfrey with the others? Severus, perhaps you’d give me and Quirinus a hand with this beast?”

“As you wish, Filius.” The faint stress Snape put on ‘you’ was a message to someone that Harry couldn’t decipher. He handed—literally—Harry over to Professor McGonagall, who brushed his hair back from his face and managed a tight smile for him.

“You look a trifle peaky, Mr. Potter. Are you steady on your feet? Why don’t you take Miss Granger’s other arm, then?” She herded the trio up to the hospital wing.

Madame Pomfrey looked them over as they came in and called up a house elf to bring a tea tray. “Did they even get a chance to eat anything at the feast?” She ran her wand over Harry and clucked. “Wine?”

“Professor Flitwick caught his own salmon,” Harry said, as if that explained everything.

McGonagall enlarged on this cryptic statement. “Mr. Potter was dining privately with Filius. I’ll have dinner sent up. A troll got into the castle, but it has been dealt with.” She was standing by Hermione, stroking the girl’s hair. “Will Mr. Potter be able to eat?”

“A light supper, then bed.” The matron directed Harry to sit on a bed, then examined the other two students. “These two could go back to Gryffindor tonight—”

“No, please. May we stay with Harry?” Harry had never heard Granger speak so softly.

“—but they would be able to eat and rest more quietly here,” Madame Pomfrey finished speaking with a bit of starch in her voice.

“Very well. Ten points to Gryffindor and ten points to Ravenclaw.” Professor McGonagall sounded resigned. “For courage and dumb luck.” She poured everyone a cup of tea. The heat of it chased the chill out of Harry’s blood.

Hermione and Neville were talking. Hermione had a catch in her voice. Harry wanted to turn his head towards them, but it was too heavy. Sleep flowed over him like chocolate syrup and drowned out their voices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never gone fly-fishing. I based my description off that of other people and what appeals to me about it.


	17. The Problems Of Philosophy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Steve Martin said, 'philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.'

_‘ There are things it is well not to ponder over too much, things that words are the best suited for.’ — William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

Halloween’s shadow lingered for Harry. It solidified his admiration of Neville and showed him that Hermione had a good heart. She was generous with her gratitude and tried hard not to smother Neville with the coaching she gave him. She wasn’t all books and pride; she loved learning for its own sake. Harry didn’t think she was ready to hear his doubts about books. He had done a session with the thesaurus and dictionary and all the new words made his head spin. Did he really need to know the slight difference between ‘intransigent’ and ‘stubborn’? Who got to claim they knew exactly which shade of green should be called chartreuse and which was lime? And then there were different languages—how could you learn another one when the one you started with was full of words you’d never heard before?

He wanted another look at the troll. Did it have a name? Was it looking for its friends? Was someone feeding it? Harry made the mistake of wondering these questions out loud during his weekly lunch at the Gryffindor table. Dean Thomas suggested, “It probably lives out in the forest. It’s Forbidden for a reason, I suppose.”

“What else is in there?” Harry asked, eyes gleaming.

“Three headed dogs, I bet,” said a Weasley twin.

“Does a three headed dog need three different names?”

“It doesn’t need any name if you’re not going to call them.”

Harry imagined a three headed dog that was three heads like Marge Dursley’s snappy yappy dogs. That would be a disappointment when he hoped for a majestic howling beast.

His wizardry skills progressed erratically. He found a nice owl feather on the ground at the foot of the owlery and used it to practice charms. Harry could do very well when the feather was the subject of a charm, but Professor Flitwick reluctantly told him he needed to do the same with objects that weren’t his as well. This tactic did not work at all in Transfiguration, where he would need to rudely alter a thing from its original nature. The problem, Professor McGonagall told him firmly, was in his head. “It usually is, Mr. Potter. But you certainly have a right to change your own mind, do you not?”

She had him there. He was changing all the time, why shouldn’t other things? He brought this to Professor Flitwick, who broke down and handed Harry a copy of Bertrand Russell’s ‘The Problems of Philosophy’. “This is the best book I’ve been able to find to suit your needs. I borrowed it from Professor Vector, so take care of it. I expect it to challenge you.”

Harry looked at the book. Challenge accepted. 

“Glean through it. Look for ideas that catch your attention, then explore them. You are looking for keys to open up your understanding. It is not an easy task. Don’t expect results right away and don’t give up. You asked for this, now you must read it all before you leave for summer vacation. If you have any questions, you should write down your question, and then from the book research an answer and record it. Afterwards you may bring it to me to discuss, but you will learn nothing unless you tussle with these questions yourself.

“Yes, Professor, I’ll do my best.” The book was not very big, but seemed heavy in his hands.

An hour later Harry had crawled under his bed. Maybe it was cupboard-like, but it was dim and peaceful. Unless it didn’t exist. How could Russell stand to think like that? He fell asleep and Kevin only spotted him by a foot sticking out. They dragged him down to supper, dustbunnies and all.

Malfoy marvelled at him. “After Filch’s job, Potter? Is it too much to expect you to wash up before you come down here?”

The familiarity of being mocked pulled Harry closer to an acceptance of the appearances of reality. He turned to Draco and lifted his arms up as if about to embrace the Slytherin boy. Malfoy recoiled back into Goyle. A beaming smile spread over Harry’s face. “This is my vast collection of electric charges in violent motion. But I have to admit I’m not sure there any tables so you’d better eat while you can.”

Kevin dragged him away. “I don’t know what we’ll do if the sausages don’t work, Anthony.”

“I didn’t realise he was so dusty until we got him in this light.” Anthony started to try to brush him down.

“No, Goldstein, that will just spread it. Tergeo,” Robert Hilliard flicked his wand at Harry and the dust disappeared. “Where was he?”

“Under his bed, suffering from a surfeit of philosophy.”

“He’ll have to build up a tolerance. Off you go, Potter, potion and supper.”

Indulging his taste for living dangerously, Harry asked Hermione Granger if she’d read any good philosophy books.

She squirmed a little. “I read a lot of books,” she said, not meeting his eyes.

“But one of them at least was about philosophy, right? Professor Flitwick gave me a book to start with but I think I’d like some other views.”

“What about other Ravenclaw students? Ask them, have you? I mean.” She twisted a hank of hair around her forefinger.

“Anthony threatened to stick a quill in my eye and Kevin keeps trying to … they told you not to, um, talk about it?”

Hermione ran a hand through her hair. “They begged me not to encourage you…” Her eyes glittered and she leaned close. “I don’t know if they have it in the Hogwart’s library but Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ was very helpful with transfiguration spells.” She took a furtive look around and hurried off.

There was no Kant in the card catalogue. Madam Pince gave him a very special stare when he asked for the book. It was all ‘no’ before her lips ever moved.

In their next Transfiguration class, Harry got caught passing Hermione a note. McGonagall read it out loud, as was her custom. “Can I borrow your cant?” She looked at Harry sternly. He looked guilty. “I will tell you, Mr. Potter, whatever this is can wait until after class. Five points from Ravenclaw.”

Michael Corner kicked his leg when McGonagall turned away. Hermione fled after class, with a Gryffindorish charge headlong down the stairs.

It turned out she didn’t have a copy with her anyway; she’d left it at home. Harry was fast like that.

No, Flitwick did not have it and he strongly recommended that Harry focus on the book he already had.

As a last ditch effort, and mostly to prove he was wasting his time, Harry stood on a table in the Ravenclaw common room and asked, “Does anyone have Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ I can borrow?”

“I have his ‘The Metaphysics of Morals’ but you can’t borrow that either,” said a seventh year boy, with an emphasis on ‘can’t’ that raised a scattering of snickers.

“When the student is ready, the book will appear,” said Hilliard, and sent him to his dorm. Harry decided to read a few pages of the Russell book daily no matter what it did to his sanity, and hope some of it stuck. And perhaps not talk about it too much because people ran away when he did.

“This was right yesterday. We left off here. There should be a painting of a lady with a pug and a mask on a stick.” Lisa looked around as if expecting to see the lady hiding behind a curtain. 

“Things change in the castle. Let’s go find some stairs and reorient ourselves,” Anthony recommended.

“It was where this door that wasn’t here is.” She grabbed at the doorknob and tried to turn it; it was locked.

A deep rumbling sound froze the Flitbabblers in their tracks.

“Sounds sort of like a jet taking off,” Kevin asserted his Muggleborn-ness.

“Sounded wetter than that. More… alive.” Terry looked all too convinced by his own suggestion. He stared at the door. They all did.

All except Harry Potter, who occasionally suffered resortment into Gryffindor. He dropped to the floor and tried to peer under the door. It was dark in there, but something made his nose twitch. He sniffed.

“Say,” said Mandy Brocklehurt. “Did we get into that third floor corridor that’s… out of bounds?”

Something sniffed back far more powerfully, shaking the door knob out of Lisa’s hand. She leapt back and panic flashfired the questing party. Flitbabblers scattered every way that was not towards the door or over a railing.

They reconvened at the previous quest point reached to reconsider the path forward. Harry stayed with the group, but his mind was busy trying to draw a line between two other points. One was ‘that which sniffs loudly behind a door’ and the other was ‘something the Weasley twins said’.

At supper, he watched the twins joke around with Lee Jordan as they ate. Their three heads bent together…

“YES!” shouted Harry because he had never heard of ‘eureka’. He tried tracking them down after supper but they were wily prey and ambushed him back.

“Look, Gred, it’s the Mad Potter.”

“What is a wild wee firstie doing poking about the castle, Forge?”

“I’ve grown an inch,” Harry said indignantly, and they laughed. “As for what I’m doing, sometimes, once in a while, on special occasions, I sniff under doors. And sometimes they sniff back. Very big sniffs. Doggy sniffs.”

“Ahhhh… been out of bounds, have we?”

“The stairs shifted on us. But I’m the one who looked under the door. I couldn’t see anything, though.” Harry made his eyes big and sad.

The twins did not seem moved. They exchanged twin-speaking looks. “Probably best.” “I mean, if he saw it, how’d he sleep at night?” “Not a bit.” “Right you are. Seeing the three sets of slavering jaws of a three headed dog would be unhealthy.” 

“Or brilliant,” claimed Harry.

The twins blinked in innocent unison. “Say, Forge, I heard The Boy Who Lived went to Gringotts with Hagrid.” “Oh, would that be the day that someone tried to rob Gringotts but the treasure had already been removed?” “I believe it was! Fancy that.” They stared significantly at Harry.

Harry hadn’t forgot Hagrid’s other errand, but he hadn’t paid any attention to the news of the robbery. Someone had tried to steal the inside-out sun. “It was wrapped up tight. About so big.” He held out his hands loosely cupped together. He wasn’t going to tell them his perception of its substance.

“Very mysterious and secret.” “Just the kind of thing we like.” “But we also like our heads.” “And our limbs.” “And everything in between.” “But if you are tormented night and day by curiosity--” “--You could look up cerberuses.” “Cerberi?” “He’s the ‘claw, not us.” On that note, they departed.

The Scottish air was crisp and cold as an ice lolly licked to an edge. There had been a few dustings of snow, but not even enough to take footprints though it taunted the students from the white-capped mountains. The warming sign Summer had taught him worked sweetly and constantly, unlike warming charms. So Harry puffed away down the frost-bitten lawn like the engine of the Hogwarts Express. He was heading to Hagrid’s hut. He’d had little to do with the giant man since their trip to Diagon Alley. Harry had wrapped himself in shadows heavily that day and on the rare occasions he met Hagrid, Hagrid looked like a man who thought he’d forgot something but couldn’t ever remember. Hagrid, however, had answers Harry had yet to find questions for.

Harry followed the loud, rhythmic sounds around to the other side of the hut and found Hagrid chopping wood. He was casual about it, chopping each short log in half with one stroke of an axe that looked small in his hand but had a blade the size of Harry’s head. Harry waited until the stroke had hit down onto the old stump below it. “Hello, Hagrid.”

“Well, if it isn’t young Harry. Kept meanin’ to invite you to tea, forget me own head next. How’s school?”

“It’s splendid for me but I don’t know how it is for the school.”

A huge dog slouched down the steps of the hut and snuffled at Harry’s face. These snuffles were not quite big enough to shake a door but were rather moist. “Good dog,” said Harry firmly.

“That there’s Fang. Seems to have taken to you, he has.” Hagrid put up his axe and began stacking the wood by the hut. Fang slobbered on Harry’s chest while the boy rubbed his copious jowls and floppy ears. 

“What sort of dog is he? He’s very large.” Harry found a spot to rub that made Fang close his eyes and lean in heavily, with happy bass whines.

“Oh, for a boar hound he is, but I’ve dealt with bigger dogs. Tea?”

“Yes, please.” Harry followed Hagrid into the hut. 

Fang gave him up for a place by the hearth. Inside, the hut was wizarding space, expanding upwards to give Hagrid more head room than appeared from outside. The ceiling was still low enough for him to reach the things he had hanging from it: pots, pans, herbs, a few pelts, and a scattering of bones. Hagrid’s kettle was already steaming on the hearth. He picked it up without bothering to protect his hands and poured it into the tea pot. “I make strong tea. Puts hair on your chest.” He glanced at Harry and added, “One o’ these days.”

“I’m in no hurry to be furry. I won’t worry. I like curry. Do you?” Harry basked in the pleasure of a flurry of rhyme.

Hagrid gaped at him a moment, then ripe chuckles burst from him like bubbles rising in a pot of soup. “M’dad used to bring it home. Haven’t had it since I was a boy, but it warmed you right up. Should get me a bit of curry powder before winter sets in. A stew is a stew is a stew.” He set out a plate of little grey cakes. “Try a rock cake. Pastry doesn’t get heartier.”

Harry picked up a suspiciously heavy grey lump. He believed in free food but this was a challenge. “Nom,” he said, scraping hopefully with his teeth. “I don’t seem to be making a dent.” He tried to count back questions — he’d got out of the habit. He didn’t know what blood sang in Hagrid’s veins, but Harry was a turnip if Hagrid was merely a very large human. Or maybe a parsnip; if in this conceit(!) a carrot was Ron Weasley. Similar, but found less often and not so orange.

Hagrid popped a cake into his own mouth and chomped down like some big construction machine. “Tastes fine to me. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I’ll try soaking it in the tea. It’s delicious tea.” Hagrid looked pleased and Harry decided to probe. “So what sorts of dogs are bigger than Fang? Great Danes? St. Bernard’s? Is Fang a magical dog? Are there lots of magical dogs?” He stopped himself before he questioned further; his tongue writhed in his mouth before sulking behind his teeth.

“There’s Crups. Cute but tiny and have forked tails, which get cropped so they don’t have to worry about them being seen by Muggles. Sad, that. So what if it doesn’t hurt them? It’s still taking away something natural to them. Even if they were wizard bred.”

“My aunt cut my hair down to the scalp once but it grew back over night.”

Hagrid snorted thunderously and Fang groaned from the hearth, craning up his head to look before going back to sleep. “Just goes to show.”

“I saw a Great Dane on the street once. It was taller than me. I was very little then. Years ago. Smaller than I am now. Much smaller. So I’m not sure if that was bigger than Fang.”

“Oh, big dogs, mm? Had one called Fluffy, a real beauty.” His eyes gleamed with pride. “Grew high as my shoulder and had three heads. “’S called a cerberus. You don’t see that every day.”

Harry sat up straight. Here was the information he wanted! “So if it had three heads, was each head named Fluffy or did they have different names?”

“Oh! Just the one. He can only come when you call once, after all.”

The rock cake was not edible by Harry even after a few minutes in tea. The liquid didn’t noticeably penetrate. Hagrid tried it, and declared it even tastier than before. For Harry, he got out a loaf of bread and carved slices from it. They toasted the slices over the fire on sticks, which was an interesting challenge to let neither bread nor stick burn. “Your hut is very cosy, Hagrid, and your hospitality is excellent. I would like to come visit more, if you would enjoy my company.”

Hagrid made a deep harumphing sound. “No need to be so formal. I’m always glad of a bit of company when I’m not working—and you’re not breaking curfew. You’d better get back for supper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read Kant years ago when my brain was more supple. In doing research, I browsed it and thought, 'If I was a wizard this would help me with transfiguration.'


	18. It's Full Of Presents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas!

  
_‘I made my song a coat_  
_Covered with embroideries_  
_Out of old mythologies’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘A Coat’_

Harry had thought himself stuffed with tea and toast, but somehow he found the strength to have a plate of fish and chips. Madame Pomfrey had altered his potion schedule and now he only took a vial at breakfast. He was still skinny but his knees were no longer so knobby or his ribs so ribby. Kevin nudged him with an elbow. “Where were you today? We thought you were somewhere up a library shelf but then you came in from outside.”

“I went down to Hagrid’s hut. He makes a fine cuppa. Ten out of ten, would slurp again, in a lion’s den, in a park or a fen—” 

Kevin shoved a chip in Harry’s mouth. “We should have never let you read that thesaurus.”

After Harry had devoured the chip, he corrected this misinformation. “I have committed rhymes before this. Don’t downplay my villainy. It’s verse than you think.”

Anthony gave him a horrified look and Terry burst into giggles. Kevin shook his head. “It’s perverse,” he grumbled.

“Also: don’t slurp,” said Lisa Turpin. A mostly female chorus affirmed this commandment.

It was the best autumn of Harry’s life. If it was also summer, it would be perfect.

As winter drew closer the teachers set their final essays for the term. Professor Snape grew more savage and Harry took to swapping partners so that none of his house mates had to bear that extra ingredient of malice too often. It came to a head when Harry was partnered with Su Li and she started sniffling. Snape growled or groaned—it was a deep throaty sound with teeth in it, and said, “Don’t s—”

And he stopped. In mid consonant, the hiss dying off his lips like a kettle taken off the hob. The classroom rustled like a pile of autumn leaves as students tried to look at Snape without looking as though they were looking at Snape. Harry was looking at Su Li. She had her teeth caught in her lower lip.

Snape reached into his robe and produced a pristine white handkerchief. “Use that. Do not add saline or mucus to potions unless it is called for and precisely measured.” Snape always spoke like music: in measures and rhythms and intonations. If the words now had been music, they would have been short beats on one note. He thrust the handkerchief at Su Li, who took it and blew her nose, her moist brown eyes fixed on Snape. He didn’t wait for her to be done with it, but resumed moving around the classroom. When he spoke, his comments were to the point and only faintly tinged with malice.

Anthony grumbled later than an unpredictable Snape was even more dangerous.

“He could probably use a course of psychotherapy,” said Lisa. “Or maybe he should take up yoga to help him with the stress.” Then yoga had to be explained to all the wizard-raised, who found it very improbable, and in Snape’s case, impossible.

“Buttons,” said Terry Boot. “They’re holding him together. That’s why his clothes have so many.”

Professor Flitwick had checked with each student to see who would be staying at Hogwarts for the holidays. Harry was the only Ravenclaw who would be staying except for a 7th year girl named Candace Cushway who spent most of her time in the library. It was her job to check in on him and make sure he was clean, fed, potioned, and went up to his dorm at a decent hour. She was a short girl, with a tendency to spots, and long blonde hair she liked to braid in a crown around her head. Her eyes were like grey marbles, and she could be brusque if her reading was interrupted. She looked after him but wasn’t pushy about it.

Harry walked with everyone down to the train station and saw them off. He promised the others to work on the wall puzzle while they were gone. They had been on the fifth level since early November. Anthony had solved the prior one. A handful of other people were staying for the break. Ron and his brothers were the ones he knew best. He and Ron walked back to the castle together. Ron regaled him with tales of his brother Charlie, who lived in Romania, worked in a dragon preserve, and had been Quidditch Captain. Harry was thrilled to hear that dragon-keeping was a possible career.

During the break, meals were served at one table. The staff joined the students. They sat at one table end, with Dumbledore at the head. The first time was awkward but after a few meals the strangeness had worn off. Even Snape seemed less threatening when you heard him asking Sprout to pass him a dish. Also, when seeing Snape among his peers, it was suddenly obvious that he was the youngest of them. The staff didn’t all show up for every day for every meal. Snape and Quirrell were the most frequently absent.

Harry loved the freedom of having the Ravenclaw common room to himself. He constructed a paper banner to read ‘SALVE MCMXCII’ which Flitwick promised to charm so it would move, if Harry could get it to change colours. He practised with scrap paper first. When he wanted company, he could find the Weasleys, who were staying because their parents were visiting an older brother in Romania. Or he could go down to the kitchen and chat a little with the house elves. They showed him the laundry room, though they wouldn’t let him wander without an escort. There was an awful lot of steam hissing about from the giant brass roller they used to unwrinkle the sheets. Outside, he visited Hagrid. Or he could fly, though he was required to sign out a specific broom and note down when he was leaving. After an hour of flying, the broom would drift down to hover a foot above the ground and his fun was over. 

He and Ron flew together often. If Fred and George joined them, they had their own brooms that let them fly however they wanted to. They would take up sticks and knock pine cones back and forth or at Ron and Harry. No amount of asking would get the twins to trade brooms. It turned out that Madame Hooch had told them Harry had to use the sluggish school broom because of his history of passing out. He tried not to think about how fast he could be going, and instead rode the old broom for all it was worth, playing with the brisk winds until his face was chapped. Otherwise he was warm in his elf-made hat, scarf and gloves.

When Harry worried about getting Christmas present for his friends, Professor Flitwick told him how to owl order. It was easy to send everyone sweets from Honeydukes. Maybe it was a little lazy, but he had never got presents for anyone before and he couldn’t exactly go shopping. He wanted to get Summer a present, but he wouldn’t be able to give it to her for weeks yet. He decided to write her another poem. He put the common room ink and parchment stand to good use writing draft after draft of bad poetry. The thought came into his head: I should write a poem for the house-elves. 

_The wind is free / it needs no clothes_ … That seemed a little pushy to give the house-elves. Maybe Summer would like that one.

 _The bread is baked / the hearth is red / the table is clean / go to bed. / Go to bed / and sleep a while / dream good dreams / wake up and smile_. More appropriate, but not so good. Though he liked the middle bit, where the words were the same but sounded different at the end of the first verse and the beginning of the second.

 _Everyone wants good things to eat / they eat their vegetables / they get their treat / they can have soup / they can have meat / lunch or supper / breakfast or tea / food is good / for you and me._ Now he was making himself hungry. He read over his verses again. Shakespeare wouldn’t lose any sleep if he wasn’t dead. But all the same, Harry copied them neatly to his own roll of parchment. Candace came in with a several rolls of parchment under her elbow and a book bag weighing down her shoulder. “Off to bed, Potter,” she yawned, and waited for him to head to his room before seeking hers.

The next morning it was Christmas. For real this time. A real Christmas in his blue tower room, with the early sun waking him and a heap of presents weighing down the foot of his bed. He was glad to be alone just then — happiness overflowed in tears that swelled his eyes with sunlight. It wasn’t a dream because he’d never had a dream so good before.

“Potter? Potter, oh.. oh, Harry.” Candace came in and sat on the edge of the bed, putting her arms around him. He found himself snuffling into her shoulder.

“Happy Christmas,” he sogged.

“Happy Christmas to you, too.” She stripped a pillow and started dabbing his face with the case.

“I never had Christmas presents before, is all. There’s so many.” Harry went from sniffling to hiccoughing, but never stopped smiling.

“I came to fetch you down to the common room. We’ll open them together, with our own little breakfast by the fireplace.”

“Sorry I cried on you.”

“Oh, pish-tosh. See?” Candace flicked her wand artfully and her dressing gown was pristine. Even the hair bow on the end of her long plait was perky again. “I’m sure it’s good luck to be cried on by a happy child. Now, go have a wash up, and I’ll have these waiting downstairs for you.”

A few minutes later he joined her at the table set by the hearth. It was so low that they sat on cushions instead of chairs. Two decorated trees flanked the fireplace. They were smaller than the ones in the great hall but beautifully adorned. One had all blue ornaments with a bronze eagle on top. The other had enchanted snow laden on its boughs, with a spiral of gold, copper, and bronze ornaments ending in a big blue velvet bow for a topper. All the common room was decked out with similar festiveness. It felt a little unreal, like being on telly.

Candace’s presents were mostly books. One gift was a pair of snowflake earrings that kept changing through different shapes with a frosty sparkle. Others she wouldn’t show him at all, laughing. “Girl stuff. If you have anything private I won’t look either.” Harry had got her a box shaped like a stack of books, with each book a different chocolate. She got him a slim and friendly looking book on essay writing, with a special bookmark that soaked up ink blots. Anthony had got him a special ruled parchment for practising his penmanship. As he pulled Kevin’s present onto his lap (a box that contained a sturdy broad toothed comb and a package of Smarties--Harry had told Kevin he’d always wanted to try them), he saw that the present underneath had an odd shimmer. The gift label had only ‘Harry Potter’. He swept it up with the next present, and put it aside with the already unwrapped ones.

Even Candace was impressed by Lisa’s gift. It was an alarm clock that could give custom messages, such as reminding the owner that Potions class was this morning, or that an essay was due.

“Even if it only works if you remember to give it a message, it’s still useful. I haven’t seen this model before. It must be new. We’ll see who comes back from break with them. Oh, what’s this one?” She nodded to a bulky present wrapped in white tissue paper tied with a multi coloured ribbon braid. On closer examination, the ribbon was from multiple ribbons cleverly joined.

Harry knew house elf work when he saw it. He knew by the weight and heft of the package that it was probably clothing. He undid the ribbon. Inside was a dressing gown made of quilted patchwork velvet. The sleeves and background were a deep bottle green, but the patches were small squares like a mosaic in all colours. The seams were piped with satin strips narrower than a quill shaft. Though they were assembled meticulously, all the materials had a slightly worn look.

“Very nice. That’s handmade and well crafted. Try it on.” Candace helped him a little with the sleeves. “Aw, it’s like you’re wearing an heirloom. Is it comfy?”

“Yes, it’s lovely and warm.”

“It brings out the green of your eyes, too.” She looked around in satisfaction. “I like a proper Christmas where the wrapping paper ends up everywhere. Here, put anything you don’t need to hold a present into this bag, and I’ll put it with the rubbish. Then take your presents up to your room. Oh! And don’t dare spoil your Christmas supper by eating all that candy. Have a couple of pieces a day. I don’t know about that Muggle candy someone sent you, but the wizard candy will stay good as long as it is left in an unopened box.” She paused, her speculative gaze on his present stack(!) Harry tried not to look shifty. “It doesn’t claim it can make you smarter, does it, Smarties?”

Harry shook his head.

“Or hurt you? No? Then why?” Candace grimaced as if wrestling her Ravenclaw brain back into submission. “Not important. Off with you, then. Keep the gift tags with the presents so you know who to thank. Happy Christmas! Wash up! Put out something tidy to wear to Christmas dinner. We’re not Slytherin house, but that doesn’t mean we should be slovenly.”

“Yes, Candace, I’ll remember.” Harry picked up after himself, sweeping his gifts up on top of that mysterious package and fleeing before Candace could give him any more instructions. It reminded him most alluringly of the item Hagrid had taken out of the vault that day in Gringotts.


	19. Cloak and Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'The destiny of man is in his own soul', said Herodotus. 'Imma give that boy an invisibility cloak and stick a magic mirror where he can find it' --unattributed.

_‘All night the gay rabble sweep to and fro across the land, invisible to all, unless perhaps where, in some more than commonly "gentle" place—Drumcliff or Drum-a-hair—the nightcapped heads of faery-doctors may be thrust from their doors to see what mischief the "gentry" are doing.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

He put his presents away. A green knit jumper he’d first thought was elf-made was from Mrs. Weasley. He folded it onto a shelf instead of hanging it up. It tended to slide off the hanger when he tried. He draped his magnificent dressing gown artfully across the foot of his bed. All that was left now was the package, sitting primly on his chair. If Harry stared at it long enough, it shimmered like sheer curtains over a window. The vault package had shone like a tiny sun. This was more like someone had put wrapping paper on a piece of night. He opened it slowly. Inside was a fabric of some sort, like velvet but thin as silk, of all colours but no one pattern. On opening it all the way, a piece of paper slipped out. He read the unsigned note, which told him the gift had been his father’s cloak.

Harry shook out the shadowed rainbow web of it. Now he could see it had a hood on it, so it was something to wear. Tension coiled in his belly. This had been his father’s? He didn’t even know what his father looked like or was like. Harry tried to imagine a father who could wear this like he owned it. Hesitantly, he pulled it across his shoulders. It settled like a feather and cupped him in its wings, like a wind that somehow blew on him from all directions at once. It brushed the floor. How long would the cloak be on an adult? He probably looked like he was wearing a blanket.

How did he look? In the loo, in the mirror, all he saw was a tousled boy’s face. He stood up on tiptoes but couldn’t see more. He pulled the hood up over his hair, then closed the front around him.

In the mirror, he expected to see a badly dressed Halloween ghost.

He saw nothing. Not even a shape of nothing. Not his face, not his glasses, not his out-thrust tongue.

He pushed back the hood, and there was his familiar head. On top of nothing. 

Wary instincts sprang to life, and Harry yanked the cloak off and let it fall to the floor. He was all there — at least, his reflection was. What had that been, cloaking not only his visible body but his magic? What was that cloak? What was his father? WHO HAD SENT IT?

Harry wrapped the cloak back up in its paper with the note, and stashed it in the password locked section of his trunk. His head reeling, he went back to the bathroom to take a long steamy shower in which he thoroughly scrubbed every inch of his skin reminding himself of the edges of his flesh.

He was going to have to read those history books. Even if they were lies, lies could be pretty close to the truth.

Christmas dinner was served in the mid-afternoon. The table was heaped with food. Harry was trying out goose for the first time, when it occurred to him that someone at this table had sent him the cloak. Like the dressing gown, it hadn’t come by owl. The goose had a gamey flavour he didn’t care for. He pushed it to the edge of the plate and carved a slice of ham, slowly, peering over the greasy red fragrant flesh mound at his suspects. Top of the list was Dumbledore. The headmaster glanced his way and Harry stuffed a chunk of ham in his mouth, closing his eyes as if interested in nothing more than stuffing his mouth.

“Enjoying the feast, Harry?”

“S’delicious. Never knew why people put ham and pineapple on pizza before.” Most of the staff looked bewildered. Harry was horrified. He’d only had a couple of slices of pizza in his life, but they had been slices of heaven. Pizza was obviously magical.

Snape said in a long suffering way, “Pizza is a flatbread savoury tart seasoned in the Italian style, with a variety of toppings, particularly cheese and tomato.” He shot a glare at Harry, who whipped a napkin up to his mouth in a vain effort to look less like a boy eating Christmas dinner.

Snape was second on his list, if only because he always looked as if he were plotting villainy. “Villainy,” said Harry out loud.

“Glad to,” said Candace, and passed him a dish of bacon-wrapped something.

Like the bold eater he was, Harry took a bite of it. The bacon covered something sweet and fleshy, which had a fruity, spicy centre. He had a second one and was a little sorry as it was quite rich and heavy in his belly. Unasked, Candace passed him a dish of green peas, and then another that had a deep purple slivered substance in it. That turned out to be cabbage, with a seasoning he couldn’t identify, sweet and tart and peppery all at once. It lingered on the tongue. 

Pleasantly stuffed, Harry sipped at pumpkin juice and listened to the others talk. Snape and McGonagall exchanged snippy little comments about Quidditch. Flitwick and Sprout were talking about charms used on the greenhouses. Hagrid’s enthusiastic rumble was easy to hear. “—a fine white behind, pretty as a picture.” Harry stirred. What kind of thing was Hagrid talking about? “Saw ‘er at sunset t’other day. Thought she was a unicorn, but they’re shinier.”

“A fortunate sighting,” said Dumbledore as he added some sprouts to his plate. 

Sinistra snorted. “I’m glad Sybill decided not to join us. That would set her off.”

“Now, Aurora, a white hind is a well known figure in legends. For my part, I welcome the visit of such a rare and beautiful creature.”

Oh, hind. Harry had misheard. Should he ask or look it up? He listened to the buzz of voices and decided not to interrupt them. They were so people-y like this, talking and eating, some of their teacherish authority set aside. There just now, Dumbledore had to dab as his beard below his lip. The most powerful wizard in Britain had to think about keeping food from falling into his beard. And he could swear Snape was actually teasing McGonagall.

“You’re very quiet. Alright?” Candace asked softly.

“Yes. It’s nice to sit at table with everyone, is all.”

It wasn’t after curfew, but the castle had the quiet of housing those who are chiefly interested in peacefully digesting an excellent meal. Harry poured the cloak from hand to hand. This was a good time to test it. If people could see him, there was no reason he shouldn’t be where he was. The cloak folded up fairly small, and he tucked it under the top of his jeans and pulled the hem of his Weasley sweater down over it. He strolled out into Hogwarts. The Flitbabblers’ questing had made him familiar with the gossipy ways of portraits, so he picked an area where none could see him before whipping the cloak out and wrapping it around him.

Was this what being invisible felt like? It covered him with more area than its actual length and width. Something about the feel of it suggested that if he tried the right way, he could walk through walls, as intangible as he was invisible. Harry didn’t try this. Suppose he became intangible and didn’t know how to get back? Could he get lost inside a wall? Some internal sense warned him that he might not come back from such a change.

He stood still feeling the floor’s solidity under his trainers. In the quiet it was easy to hear Filch grumbling to himself as he approached. And where Filch was, was Mrs. Norris, walking well ahead with her tail carried high. He could tell she could not see him, but as she neared, her whiskers twitched and her nose lifted to scent. He ducked into the nearby half-open door and closed it behind him.

He was not alone. He glimpsed faces looking in through a pane of glass, looking at him. He drew nearer.

One face was Harry Potter, but reversed. A mirror. His reflection stood between a man and a woman who were not there. He let the cloak drop to the floor, but the image was still there. The woman smiled wider and slipped her hand into his reflected hand.

The man put his hand on Harry’s reflected shoulder. He had glasses too, and his hair was ruffled. The woman had green eyes. These were his parents, or an image of them. This was more than reflection, to show him though he wore the cloak. So it wasn’t a reflection of his body, but something more, something the cloak didn’t block. He’d read Muggle stories of magic mirrors. This one had an inscription over the top, but the words made no sense. “Erised. E-rized? Er I said? S’treah?” He rubbed his forehead and reflection-Harry rubbed his oppositely. That was clue enough, and he parsed through the letters in reverse. “So my heart’s desire is something I can’t have? That’s depressing. Or like a story where someone doesn’t know where to stop and everything goes horribly wrong.”

Something was in the distant back of the image. He stepped closer, gazing past the wistful faces of his parents.

In the Little Whinging public library, he had found a reference book left open to anatomy plates where the layers of a cow could be stripped away one by one - skin, muscles, organs, down to bone. This was a horse with skin over bone, moving through mists as if gathering substance from them yet never enough to make up for the missing flesh. And on its back was Summer, her hair streaming back in tatters shorn of its ornaments. Her face turned towards him half-skull, light piercing through the fleshless jaw. The whole surface of the mirror filled up with the mists--heaved with the mists--and Harry grabbed the cloak and fled.

That night he wrapped up in layers and headed to the Astronomy tower. In the last lesson before the hols, Professor Sinistra had them look at the constellations that circled the north star, Polaris. They had to locate the constellations and were assigned an essay to write about the different names. Apparently Justin Finch-Fletchley had done a hilarious imitation of Draco Malfoy hearing that the constellation he was named after had been assigned to the class. Harry was glad the Ravenclaws were with the Gryffindors; Malfoy in the daytime was enough Malfoy.

Here he stood, chilled, the cloak tight about him, his eyes uplifted. Cassiopeia, the seated lady, was high and bright in the sky. It made him think of Summer coming up from the Underworld, and doomed to go down again. Doomed by the name he gave her. Did the names given by humans mean anything to the stars? Did humans need to do any more than admire their distant beauty? If he had never met Summer and named her, those stars would rise and fall just the same.

Harry heaved a sigh and fogged his glasses. Here he was, a wizard wearing an invisibility cloak and he had foggy glasses, like a proper shivering leaf. A leaf that should be in a nice warm bed. Ears perked for the steps of patrolling staff, he made his way carefully down the Astronomy tower stairs and back up the Ravenclaw tower stairs. It was thrilling to be abroad in the castle at night and see its dark face. Is this what it was like to be a Weasley twin? All went well until he got to the Ravenclaw common room door.

“As many brothers as sisters has she / her brother has sisters twice as many,” said the door knocker.

Invisible or not, he still had to answer the riddle if he wanted to get in, or sit here in the chilly corridor until morning. All a Gryffindor had to do was remember the password. He sat down with his back against the wall. The words both concealed and revealed. He hated math riddles. He wished he had a pencil to carry around with him for times like this. “If she has one sister and brother, her brother has two sisters and she has one of each.” The door stayed shut. “But the riddle says brothers.” Eventually he worked out that the sister had three brothers and sisters, so that the brother had two brothers and twice that many sisters at four. The door opened and Harry hurried over to the warm fire and curled up in front of it still wearing the cloak.

In the morning he was stepped on by a house-elf, who in alarm blew cinders all over the hearth instead of vanishing them. Harry coughed and gave the cloak a good shake. No cinder or ash clung to it. “Sorry. I’ll get out of your way,” he yawned, and headed up to his room, leaving the bewildered elf behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore. I don't see him as a bad person though I can understand that others do. I like to give characters in all media the benefit of the doubt. It's easy to look back and wonder what the heck he was thinking. I think of him as someone who still has the ethical mindset of an older time, who has been fighting a war for decades driven by the vision of a better world. 'For the greater good' is an idea that still has power over him, even though he has enlarged his definition of who should benefit from this good from the days when he still believed in Grindelwald. A lot of what can be taken for his strategy in hindsight, I take for his mistakes. They have a bigger impact than the mistakes of other people.


	20. Magical Theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry begins the Magical Theory course. He has a lot of questions and in is danger of getting answers.

_‘It sounds to me like foolishness; and yet that cannot be, for the writer of this book, where I have found so much knowledge, would not have set it by itself on this page, and surrounded it with so many images and so many deep colours and so much fine gilding, if it had been foolishness.’ —William Butler Yeats, from ‘The Hour-Glass: A Morality’_

The new term schedule was the same as before except for the removal of Orientation and the addition of two sessions of Magical Theory. It was taught by Professor Rough, a Scot with less of a burr in his voice than Professor McGonagall. He had blue eyes and his hair was white with strands of black running through it for a marbled effect. His beard was braided and ended in a clasp with a star sapphire in it. His eyebrows stood out from his face like grazing sheep.

Magical Theory was a slow, dry class that put them in peril of drowsiness after lunch. It was enlivened by Anthony Goldstein, who asked very interesting questions. Lisa was excellent at seeking clarification. Padma approached the subject from a slightly different view point as if she’d had some education on the subject others had not. The most silent ones were the Muggleborns, who were still coming to grips with the reality of magic. The exception was Hermione Granger, who asked complicated questions and was generally referred to an additional text and essay topic. After a couple of these Harry could see the tips of Anthony’s ears turning red. Behind him, he could hear the scratch of Kevin’s quill and the rustle of his blotting paper working with a mechanical rhythm.

Harry’s hand raised. As he’d learnt to do, he let the question fill his mouth so it rolled out when the teacher called on him. “Does the magic you use in a spell still belong to you after you use it?”

Professor Rough paused a moment and Harry realised that his question didn’t relate to the topic at hand. He blushed a little but kept his gaze on the teacher. Now that he’d asked, he really wanted to know the answer.

“As is often the case, the answer is both no, and yes. So when I break down the question to look at its elementary parts, the first thing to ask is, did the magic ever belong to you?”

Harry quivered like a struck guitar string. “I would say the use of it is mine. I put something of me into it. Like breathing air in and out.”

“Two points to Ravenclaw. That’s an interesting analogy. Write me three feet exploring the idea. The second part of your question is more complex. The magic you do leaves a trace in your wand. Priori Incantatem can be used to have a wand show spells it has been used to cast. The Ministry of Magic uses a charm called the Trace to notify them of underage magic use outside of Hogwarts. This is to support the Statue of Secrecy and also to protect children against magical accidents. We have quite enough of those from adult wizards. Ahem.

“However there are plenty of spells which once cast, have an instantaneous effect that leaves no detectable trace of the caster. Further, there are spells that when cast, leave their mark on the caster. So you will see, that your question opens up matters of considerable complexity, which we will discuss as they come up in the syllabus. You are all free to read ahead in the course texts, but after today, let us try to stay within the schedule. I don’t make it for my own entertainment.”

The Flitbabblers study group chewed over the first class. “’What is magic? Many claim to know, but certainty is for the complacent,’ Kevin read from his notes.

“I hate to admit it, but I prefer Professor Snape’s opening speech,” Lisa commented. “Great delivery, inspiring ideas, elegant language.”

“Followed by him implying we’re all probably too stupid to get it right,” Terry Boot reminded her.

“It’s a challenge,” piped up Su Li. Her face began to blotch red as if everyone’s stare was a thrown tomato, and she receded behind Lisa’s stalwart shoulder.

“Or a prophecy,” said Michael Corner.

Anthony Goldstein was looking off at another table. “Someone is going to have to delay Granger after every class so we can get to the books before she does.” Granger was heavily fortified behind stacked books.

“Or we could study with her,” Kevin said mildly. “She can only look at one book at a time, after all.”

“Parvati says she studies all the time. Hardly anyone in Gryffindor talks to her.”

“Padma, your sister and Lavender Brown were passing notes all class,” said Michael.

Harry found himself carrying his notes over to the other table. He put them down opposite Hermione and peered over the stack at her . “Excuse me, I need to look at—there it is, that one— Oldershaw’s ‘Resounding Magic’.” He smiled at her. “I’ll read it right here.”

Her eyes refocused on him. “Of course you may. I mean, it’s not mine. Or the chair.” Then they dropped again to her book, while she made notes without looking at her moving hand. She wasn’t writing full sentences. She added a note, then a page reference.

Harry pulled the book out of stack, and opened it. He had picked it at random, which often worked well for him. On this occasion, he doubted his luck. ‘Resounding Magic’ was about magical resonances and the relationship between the length and construction of a wand and how well it worked for the wizard, and how favourable a wand was for certain types of magic. It involved a lot of math that was beyond him. At last he decided just to read and see what he picked up. One one page there was a sketch of a wizard brandishing a wand and sparkles of magic flowed down his arm and when they reached the wand, tightened into a spiralling stream.

“Say, Granger, is that Tyrrell’s ‘On Druidic Practices’? Let me have a go when you’re done, will you?” Lisa sat down next to Harry and arranged her notes.

“I’m nearly done,” said Granger, forcing a quick smile. “I was hoping to find history about magic in ‘History Of Magic’ class, but it’s really, ‘history of the wizarding world’, isn’t it? This is fascinating. I wish I could read the original, but it’s in a museum. And written in runes. I can hardly wait for the elective classes in third year.”

Everyone but Padma and Morag drifted over after that. Harry hardly noticed, as deep as he was into ‘Resounding Magic’, that Granger’s walls were being slowly dismantled.

“Harry, it’s almost time for supper.” Lisa nudged him hard.

He lifted his head and met Granger’s eyes. “I still want to read that, you know.” There was a hungry gleam in her eyes.

“Oh, yes, I would just like to finish it first. Say, have you seen Neville since class?”

Granger blinked several times. “Drat, I meant to invite him to study.” She started gathering her belongings together. The others at the table hastily took hold of books they meant to check out and queued up for Madame Pince.

Harry hunted Neville up after supper and babbled at him about wand length and matching frequencies and kept grabbing his arm. “It was my father’s!” Neville protested.

“I think it’s a bad fit. I mean, I don’t understand everything that’s in this book, not by any means, but it makes some sense of what Mr. Ollivander was doing… and you never even saw him, if this is your father’s wand.”

“Grandmother wanted me to have it. To… to be a credit to my dad.” Neville’s shoulders hunched.

Harry paused mid-exposition and looked at his friend. “Sorry if I’m being a pest. I just. You just. Deserve to be you. Good at being you. I already like you for you.”

Neville looked at him gape-jawed a moment, then blushed furiously. “Thanks. I like you too.” He turned his father’s wand over in his hands. Harry thought of the invisibility cloak hidden in his trunk, another weighty legacy.

“I don’t know how to ask her without seeming disrespectful. It’s been hard on her, raising me.”

Harry cleared his throat. “Maybe you could talk to Professor Rough, and Professor McGonagall, too. If teachers told her you needed a wand fitted to you, she might listen.”

“You know Ron has his brother Charlie’s old wand. But the Weasleys, well, eight children, and one still to come to school. It’s not just me.” His eyes narrowed with unaccustomed determination. “I think I will go speak to Professor Rough. Thanks for the idea, Harry.”

Likewise determined to be gracious, Harry replied, “You’re welcome, Neville. Fair fortune.”

“Ooooo…maybe that’s something like what Hermione read…”

“Don’t make me have to go in there again, Potter,” said Kevin.

Harry was under his bed. He hadn’t finished ‘Resounding Magic’, but he’d promised to keep reading the philosophy book and he’d fallen behind. Having been reminded of this promise, he retreated under the bed, with the book spread on the floor out in the light.

“I’m on top of being under here,” Harry promised.

“I’ve got it, I’ve… NO! Bugger.” In the back of the room, Terry fell from joy to despair, then gathered hope to him again. “I need another pair of hands. Two, I think. Potter, get over here. And I’ll take either Entwhistle or Corner.”

The boys gathered around the puzzle. Terry placed Harry’s hands on the middle and lower right corner, and Kevin’s at the top corners. Standing between them and before them, he had them draw their hands back nearly to their shoulders. “This might take a couple of tries. Kevin, there’s a couple of bits up top that slow me down. You get those. Harry, there’s a piece in the middle you can’t let move once I’ve touched it, and when we’re nearly at the end, there’s a bit you need to slide down. It won’t appear until then. You can’t miss it. But you have to move it at the same time I’m moving the other piece. I think. Got it? Okay.”

Terry’s hands began to move tiles. In this iteration of the puzzle, moving pieces made other pieces start to slide in the same direction, until a new tile was moved. It was relatively easy for tall Kevin to spot the tiles Terry needed him to move and he could keep his hands nearly on them until he was needed. But Harry’s view of the middle was obscured by Terry’s arm.

“Let Kevin do that bit. I can’t see through you.” Harry was not going to let Terry borrow the invisibility cloak for this. Besides, they needed to see each other’s hands.

With Kevin reaching down, Harry could spot the middle piece that needed to be kept still. He put his arm around Terry’s neck to hold it and depended on his sense of touch to keep adjusting it as it was nudged in various directions. His gaze was on the lower right section. A tile slid into view that had a picture of a blue egg with brown spots. He put his fingers on it and pushed it down into the corner.

The edge of the tiles fused. The egg cracked and a black taloned eagle flew out of it and spoke:  
“When the hour grows near and your treasure is lost, speak these words and no fines will it cost.” A banner unfurled from its talons like a heraldic motto. In fancy lettering it read ‘MONSTRANT LIBRI’.

There was silence for a moment, and then Terry said gently, “Stop hugging me, Potter.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“It’s a spell for finding books due back in the library. Handy!”

“Gentlemen,” began Anthony, and they waited for the usual speech. This one sounded as if it had been prepared in advance. “After months of concerted effort, we have succeeded in unravelling the puzzle left us by our predecessors in this place. It was a fine puzzle, and I for one enjoyed the process immensely. Now we may enjoy the fruits of victory, huzzah!”

They huzzahed obediently.

“Yet in the shadow cast by that victory is the knowledge that one day, we too shall be gone from this pleasant room. When new boys come to live here, let us be sure to welcome them with a puzzle of at least equal quality.”

“Goldstein, we have over six years. Right now I want to bask,” said Terry.

“Huzzah,” said Harry, Kevin, and Michael.

Anthony attempted to harumph and had a coughing fit instead. “Leaving it to the last minute is bad form.”

“How about leaving it to the last year?” Kevin asked.

“Sixth year,” Michael Corner said. “After O.W.L.s and before N.E.W.T.s.”

“But no pressure,” grinned Terry Boot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I composed a spreadsheet trying to figure out who took what when where, for a Hogwarts education. I decided to stick for this story to the canon teachers for the canon subjects, with a few exceptions. Magical Theory seemed to be both necessary and difficult to pin down. Ravenclaw Harry's class schedule reflects his house so he has a different schedule in canon. TLDR: WHERE I HAVE VIOLATED CANON IS ALL MY FAULT


	21. Holly and Hemlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer returns with dire riddles. Harry tries to get Professor Snape to answer a question, and finds it rough going.

_‘I see her in every kind of shape but oftener than not she’s in the wind’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘On Baile’s Strand’_

Two interesting things happened in February. Neville and Ron returned from a weekend away with new wands. Which of them was more altered was hard to say. Neville’s spellwork swiftly improved and with it came a thicker skin to the jeers of others. Ron dove into his schoolwork with an enthusiasm that gratified Percy, thrilled Hermione Granger, and confounded Fred and George. The downside was that his table manners became worse as he spoke more during meals, talking about classes. People would keep changing seats so as not to be next to him, but he could hardly seem to help himself.

Neville’s only comment in public was that he thought his grandmother had ‘lit a fire under Ron.’ In private, he said to Harry, “I convinced my grandmother that I had to have a new wand, but that I’d feel bad for Ron. She took it from there.”

This all pleased Harry, but was not really his business though he was glad for Neville and Ron. Going out to Summer’s tree at lunch, he found himself walking in the path of pairs of divots in the snow. They were heading to the tree. He backtracked and found them tracing back to the Forest, making a wide crescent first towards then away from the castle, where his own trudged steps obliterated them. He moved to the side, and bounded forward, trying to make emulate the motion that made the track. Where it didn’t splatter, snow crunched under his feet into little icy balls. What ever made those tracks understood snow and was one with the winter. He, with his reddening nose and his breath making ice crystals slowly form on the edge of his scarf, could only look on from the outside. 

The sun came out from behind a cloud and dazzled over the snowy slope of the lawn. He had to lift his hand against the brightness, but at his feet were clear directions to follow. They led him into the shadow of the tree, such as it was with its leaves mostly fallen. And there, at last, was Summer.

“You’re bleeding,” Harry said incredulously.

Summer shook her head and the bright red beads moved with the sway of her hair. When he came closer he saw she’d threaded holly berries through her hair. At least, through what hair she had. On the left side it was cropped nearly to the skin. “I am hale; would I could not say as hale as you. You have been keeping perilous company, my hero.”

“I saw you, riding a skeletal horse. And my parents. In a mirror.”

“A mirror is a chancy thing to begin with. Give it glamourie and it may see all manner of things in you.” She held out her left hand, palm flat. He met it with his right. “If it is thee or me, I cannot say, but we are standing in shadows.”

Her hand felt hard and smooth like polished wood but he laced his fingers through hers. “I got a package with a note saying that the cloak inside had been my father’s. It makes me invisible. It feels like it does more than that.”

Summer blew a smoking breath out through her teeth. “Are you yet a brewer, my hero?”

“Not according to Professor Snape.”

Summer leapt up onto a tree branch and stood with one foot on it, one hand hanging from a branch above like Tarzan ready to swing off into the jungle. “Did I ask him?”

Harry bowed his head, blushing. “You did not. You asked me. And I was rude to you and to him. I will make it right. Potion-making is very interesting. When I use charms or transfigurations, I feel weirdly connected to the workings. But with potions, when they are complete, they are separate from me. I have been trying to understand why and you make me think it is even more important than I guessed. What is the difference between a potion and… and a levitated feather?”

She sat down on the branch. “When the water falls from the sky and runs in streams to the ocean; when the herb grows from the earth and you pluck its leaves to seethe them in a tisane, is this not magical?”

He was behind a question, and this was hard, and important, a big thing to think about and his brain felt so small. “May I give you a poem before I give you an answer?”

“You may.”

“The wind is free / it needs no clothes / it has no house / it has no nose / whether it gusts / whether it blows / wherever it wants / to go it goes.”

Summer laughed, and the knot in him eased. “Well done.” She swung her feet to an expectant beat.

“So. Yes, I think it’s magical but I don’t think wizards think these things are magical. A wind that blows when they tell it to, they would call that magical. And you described a potion. If two wizards make a potion with the same recipe and the same quality of ingredients, and they do it right, the potions will be the same. So they don’t depend on the magical ability of the specific wizard, but that they are magical.” He bounced on his toes. “The wizard is like the cauldron and the fire. But the feather only flies because I am making it fly.” Harry leaned against the tree. Thoughts cartwheeled through his brain; it was time for his third question and he let it leap unpolished from his tongue. “Is that what Dumbledore was talking about when he said music was a magic beyond anything we do at Hogwarts?”

“You should ask him if you wish to know what he thinks, but mind that in return he may wish to know what you think. Once there was a man considered wise, who held the asking of questions above the answering of them. Those who did not like the questions condemned him to drink water steeped in the leaves of the hemlock tree.”

Harry shuddered as if the cold had skipped his warm feet and shot straight up his spine. Summer was gone.

He sprang it on them at Wednesday breakfast. “I’m going to ask Professor Snape a question. And if he gets nasty, let him get it out of his system, alright? Sometimes you just have to go for it. I don’t want it to splash on to anyone else, but there might be points taken from Ravenclaw.”

“’Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of Hell / rode the Flitbabblers.’” Everyone stared at Kevin. “’S’m’dad’s favourite poem. Well, it’s the only one he knows that’s not a limerick. Tennyson? ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’? Anyone English here? It’s about a cavalry unit that got killed. Horses. Dad’s dead bent on everything horse.”

“Oh, right,” Lisa said, “I’ve heard of that. And Tennyson, of course. Poet Laureate.” With slow consideration, she regarded Kevin over everyone else’s heads.

“Someone say anything that’s not what I said,” Kevin begged.

From his kosher domain at the end of the table, Anthony said several words that no one understood. The syllables of them wound down the table, turning all heads within earshot until he was done. He broke a piece of bread apart and applied butter to it. His golden lashes fluttered over his blue eyes. “What, you’ve never heard Hebrew before? It’s a ancient language and we have an extensive history of mystical lore. I have special classes at home, and study that I do here.”

Respect and curiosity twined through Harry’s thoughts, but whatever Anthony was, was something he could not be. He had his question for Snape. He needed his nerve. “I’ll ask at the end of class,” he said to the others. “Since it’s about potions but is a general question. I’ll share later; just leave me in there because you know he hates it when we straggle out of class.”

The others nodded grimly. They’d had months of class to observe how Professor Snape’s well of antipathy never ran dry for Harry. Longbottom and the Weasley twins were but distant rivals.

In class, Harry concentrated fiercely to make his behaviour as acceptable as possible. He owed Professor Snape for speaking discourteously of his teaching. Whatever the man said to him, he was still a brilliant Potions master, a possessor of expert knowledge. So that it wouldn’t distract him, he’d written his question down on a bit of parchment so that he could look at it and have the question fresh in his mind before asking it. He had it tucked in his Potions text as a bookmark.

‘Given two wizards, no matter their raw power or their skill at other types of magic, if they followed the same recipe precisely, using the same quality of tools and ingredients, would the resulting potions be identical in potency? Re: Magical Theory class. Is this practical to test due to small variations in skill levels, equipment, and ingredients? Am I just asking if a wizard is a tool or an ingredient?’

Snape’s eye was sharp to details. Certainly, he noticed the bit of paper; more he noticed Harry’s nervous glance as he noticed Professor Snape noticing it. Fear being one of Snape’s classroom tools, he swooped down on it and the paper vanished up his robe sleeve. “5 points from Ravenclaw. This is confiscated.”

“Yes sir,” said Harry, not bothering to hide his dismay. How much of this would constitute an apology for an offence Snape wasn’t aware of? Mind, Snape gave the impression of assuming Harry was always committing an offence. As unpleasant as it was, it was kind of rude in itself to not be afraid of something scary. What was the point of pretending he wasn’t scared? He should say that to Neville.

Harry didn’t rush to turn his potion in, though all he to do to be one of the last was to not rush. The other students were intent on getting out the door. He lingered by the desk out of the way of the stragglers. A pleased sneer curled Snape’s lips. Instead of stalking his prey, he waited in ambush for Harry to walk into the trap. Harry didn’t dare dither. He was going to have to wing his question or get tossed out. “Excuse me, Professor Snape. May I ask a question about, about the theory of potions?”

“You may ask, if you don’t take up too much of my time.”

“I know a Muggle can’t make potions. Is the wizard making the potion a tool or an ingredient?” Snape’s eyes narrowed into a lethal glitter, and Harry added, “I’m trying to understand if the difference between the magic of individual wizards makes a difference to the potion, if everything else is the same.”

Snape’s stare poked hundreds of red hot needles at Harry until he felt like he was going to steam at the ears like one did after drinking Pepper-up potion.

“Is this for your Theory of Magic class? I am not a substitute for the library, Potter.” He started to rise from his seat preparatory to annihilating Harry from the classroom. 

“Sorry, Professor Snape. Could you suggest any references?”

“The textbooks. All of them. Are you quite through wasting my time?”

“Yes sir. Thank you for your time.” He left the classroom. It wasn’t until later that he realised that he’d escaped without losing any further points for Ravenclaw. Maybe what he wanted was covered in the more advanced Potions textbooks, or perhaps it was something Professor Snape thought students ought to understand on their own. He wondered if he could get used textbooks. Maybe the sixth or seventh years who didn’t take advanced Potions would let him have theirs cheap. Lower years would want them as O.W.L. references.

Harry began with a stroke of luck. It turned out his first year Potion book was also used for second year. But finding used books beyond that didn’t work out well as students who weren’t taking advanced Potions had left their books for it at home.

“Few Ravenclaws like to loan books, Harry,” Candace Cushway told him. “You might find copies of the Potion texts either in the Ravenclaw library or in the main library, but you will have limited time with them as they are on a waiting list. People lose track of their books or forget them at home over a holiday or didn’t realise they needed a previous year’s book to help them revise for O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s. If all that fails, you can see if Professor Snape might have copies you can borrow. You could try ordering new books for the later years for yourself. Updated editions of textbooks are rare, so you probably won’t find yourself stuck with an out of date textbook. Not that people haven’t used those. Some families hand textbooks down until the book is falling apart.”

Candace was correct about the waiting lists. He put his name down for all the later Potions texts. After Christmas, his coins were too few to buy even next year’s Potion text. So Professor Snape it would have to be. He would go down there and knock on Professor Snape’s office door. He would go down into the dungeons full of Slytherins and knock on the office door. He would open the door of Ravenclaw Tower and go down to the dungeons full of Slytherins. He would walk over to the door… he would get up out of his chair… he would put his feet on the floor. “I could have been in Gryffindor!” Harry shouted.

The Ravenclaw common room buzz of paper, pen, sighs, whispers, and the small clanks of moving chessmen stopped. The older student next to Harry looked up and said, “You could have been a girl. You could have been a Hufflepuff or a Slytherin. Causality is the effect of innumerable factors in play before you were ever born. Hennepin’s Postulate of Incipience, used in conjura—”

“Hennepin’s Posterior! James’ ‘Commentary on Plasticity in Nature’ explains how all possibilities are extant in the multiverse.”

Harry slid out of his chair as the argument began to spread beyond those two. This being Ravenclaw, not having an opinion was tantamount to admitting one didn’t understand the question. So: he could have been in Gryffindor, which was almost the same as having been sorted into Gryffindor, which surely meant he could go ask Professor Snape if he could borrow a book. If he opened the door, went to the dungeons, knocked on the office door, and opened his mouth and asked for books, being told ‘no’ was the least of his worries. For instance, when he lifted his hand to knock at the door, it opened and Marcus Flint stomped out. He glared at Harry and shouldered him aside. Harry let himself be pushed. He caught the door as it started to swing back and knocked on the inside.

“Detention, Fl… oh, it’s you, Potter. I can easily assign it to you instead if you don’t leave immediately.” Snape stirred in his chair. The light came from behind him, threw deep shadows on his narrow face and made his nose stand out like an eagle’s beak.

“Excuse me, Professor. I’m having a hard time finding copies of the upper year Potions texts. Do you have any I could borrow?” Having meant to sound ultra-polite, Harry heard his squeaky voice with dismay. He tried swallowing it down. “If you would be so kind,” started out deep and ended in a cough.

Snape visibly winced. Perhaps he had a headache, or perhaps Harry’s voice hurt his ears considering the velvet of his own. He extended a long button-contained arm. “Look on the bottom shelf there. Take them and stop inflicting your presence on me before I inflict detention on you. Return the books by next week, or you will get a month of detentions. There are always cauldrons to be scrubbed. Well?” His hand slashed his impatience into the air.

Harry sprang into discreet action — since running wasn’t allowed, he scuttled across the floor (on his silent feet) and knelt to the lowest shelf. He tucked three books under one arm and two under the other. Snape was staring at him with increasing pressure. Harry had missed something. He sidled towards the door. Snape’s lips were curling towards maximum sneer.

Ah. “I appreciate this very much, Professor.” His elbow bumped the door and he started to push out.

Snape leaned forward, his eyes glittering out of the shadows. “Do you, now?” The words were supple and heavy like a well-fed snake.

“Yes, sir.”

“So you say.”

“Goodnight, Professor.”

“Be gone.”

Harry needed no more direction than that. He darted away, letting the door swing shut behind him. Even with its weight between him and the Potions Master, he still felt those eyes on him.

With only a week to review the books, he started with the indexes and appendices to see if he could locate references to the theories behind potion making. The sixth and seventh year books had the densest texts he’d ever tried to make sense of. Maybe someone already knew what he was looking for? Harry started with Candace.

“I’ve got all the textbooks and I’ve looked through what they cover but I’ve only a week and I thought perhaps someone had already looked for what I was looking for before.”

Candace managed to parse this and advised, “What you need is a student who is taking advanced Potions. Try Chambers or Bythesea.”

Chambers would probably help. He got up Harry’s nose though, so he went looking for Bythesea. Spenser Bythesea was a slender boy with a haunted face. His hands were leopard spotted with ink in various stages of fading. Harry found him in the common room with three books open and scattered pieces of parchment that were either carefully arranged or simply stopped from falling to the floor.

“Excuse me, Bythesea?”

The boy looked up, pushing his hair from his face, adding a streak of ink to his forehead, and said, “Er?”

“Could I—”

“Aiee!” A parchment started to roll up around a quill causing a massive blot. Bythesea grabbed for the quill, the parchment, the ink pot, and the book, but only had two hands.

Harry’s deft hand darted in and plucked up the ink pot before it could spill. “That was close. I had a question about Potions, but obviously I’m disturbing you.”

“No, not at all,” Bythesea lied. “What’s the question?”

“I borrowed some books from Professor Snape and I’m looking for some explanation of how the wizard’s own magic contributes to the potion making process—”

“Is that going to be on the test? I don’t remember that. Was it that day I was sick in fifth year?” He started frantically rearranging his pile of books.

“I’d better leave you to it. Here’s your ink pot.” Harry set it in what he hoped was a safe spot and backed away.

A hand fell on his shoulder. “Did I hear young Harry Potter has been reading ahead of his year like a good Ravenclaw?” It was Chambers, of course. He would have made an excellent police officer with his ability to authoritatively take hold.

“It’s an essay for Magical Theory that I’m relating back to potion brewing.” Harry resigned himself to being helped by Chambers. Between being tutored in penmanship and now, he had come across the word ‘avuncular’, which described Chambers perfectly and explained why Harry didn’t care for him. Even so, Chambers suggested which texts were most relevant and gave him key words to search for. He seemed quite pleased with himself, so Harry thanked him without qualms and escaped to his dormitory to start work on the essay. 


	22. Invention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Harry does nothing that could dissuade anyone from calling him 'The Mad Potter'.

  
_‘Shut to the door before the night has fallen,_   
_For who can say what walks, or in what shape_   
_Some devilish creature flies in the air, but now_   
_Two grey-horned owls hooted above our heads.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Countess Cathleen’_

Harry went back and forth on the conclusion of his essay. Literally: he ran back and forth across his bit of the room, trying to wear out the bit of him that kept second guessing. When he stopped, he ended on one foot. The other swung in the air; his arms windmilled.

“Indecision: The Boy Who Waffled,” said Terry Boot.

“If only I had a camera,” Kevin agreed.

“Harhar,” Harry said, flinging himself at his desk and starting to write.

“Ryry,” came an answering chorus.

“It just so happens I made up my mind and I will lay out the question and, and, and discuss the options. I’m eleven! Should I have to solve this problem?”

“Yes,” said everyone, whether they meant it or not.

“Now?”

There was a mumble of general affirmation and one “Yes,” from Terry Boot, unrivalled in his ability to respond to a cue.

“I’ll throw a sock at you, Boot.”

This was a genuine threat. Harry’s few socks were worn past even the ability of house-elves to clean thoroughly and all he had for shoes were his trainers (which were beginning to be rather tight). His feet were always warm, but this comfort came with an odorous downside. Terry wisely shut up rather than be literally required to put a sock in it.

Harry would have welcomed seeing his socks (or pants) show up rewoven from a mix of new and old fibers, but possibly the Muggle materials confounded house-elf magic. He certainly wouldn’t ask. The gifts already given were too precious to be demeaned by greed. He would have to find a way to obtain what he needed himself.

4 Privet Drive flashed before his eyes. How could he fit himself back into that place? He would be going back—where else could he go?

Anywhere. Anywhere, which included 4 Privet Drive. After all, if he couldn’t figure out how to live with the Dursleys, how was he going to figure out how not to get killed by Mold… Vole…Voldemort? Just because his scar hadn’t hurt for months didn’t mean the danger in this world had gone. The invisibility cloak lay tucked away deep in his trunk. The Mirror of Erised was hidden somewhere in the castle.

He riffled through the pages of Advanced Potion-Making. Whoever had owned this book had a poor opinion of its contents, to have corrected them so extensively. Were they good corrections? Did the spells work? Harry had not previously considered that spells were invented. And they were still being invented. He could invent them. He inked a question mark on his right index knuckle to remind himself to ask about spell inventing.

Once more he ventured into the dungeon. Not for nothing had he been schooled in a blackboard jungle. A parcel of books carried over his shoulder, Harry moved lightly, all his senses keyed up. He was sad there were fewer statues and niches down here for hiding out. Even the doors brooded on their hinges as if ready to close a trap on him. Probably he would survive anything done to him, but he would be an unhappy Harry while it was being done.

He didn’t know where the entrance to Slytherin House was, but he wished he did so he could avoid it. Harry had considered using the invisibility cloak, but didn’t want to risk being spotted coming out from under it. Where could he learn to be sneakier? Now that would be immediately useful, unlike turning a desk into a pig. Was it in DADA? Or maybe sneakiness was a Dark Art? As Harry found himself wondering what was really meant by a Dark Art, he found himself at the office door of the man most likely to be able to explain it. Harry knocked. Legitimate business. Be polite. Be scared.

“Enter,” said Snape’s pre-irritated voice. One got to know the difference.

Harry went in. “Excuse me, Professor Snape. I’m returning the books you loaned me. They were very useful and I’m most grateful.” 

Snape’s gaze rose from the papers he was bleeding his judgement onto. Like lava rising from a volcanic fissure, it filled the air with heat fast rising to lethality. “Well? Don’t dawdle there, return them to the shelf.”

Harry went to the bookshelf and started to put the books back where he’d found them. He paused over ‘Advanced Potion-Making’. “Sir? This book… perhaps you should see this.”

Snape didn’t look up from his papers. “Do you imagine there is something I’ve not seen in those books after having taught here for as…” He paused. Snape reconsidering his words was uncommon and unnerving. 

“Someone wrote all over this one.”

Maybe Snape was part-snake. He whipped out of his chair and was on Harry in a breath, snatching the book from his hand. Harry stumbled back from the threat of him, and hit the bookshelf. Snape ran his hands over the book. His lips writhed together.

Harry did not want to wait for what he would say but to run felt more dangerous. “Were those real spells? Did he write a book for potions, the half-blood prince?”

Snape breathed heavily through his nose. His nostrils flared; he should have spouted smoke like a dragon. If the buttons had popped off his robes it would have been no surprise to Harry.

“You are not to attempt any of those spells. As for the potion recipe corrections, they are beyond your grasp. Do only as I instruct you. Do you understand?” The smoke was all in his eyes, black choking clouds of it.

“Yes, sir.” He stared up at Professor Snape in fear and wonder. Maybe he was a dragon transfigured into a human. That would be brilliant-er-est.

The quite human frown that crossed Snape’s face was a let-down. “Get out, Potter.”

Potter got. Snape’s pursuing, “Five points from Ravenclaw for running in the halls,” was a reassuring injustice.

Having finished two essays, Harry was in search of. Of enlightenment, or portals to other worlds; of the riddle to end all riddles. So of course he had taken himself to the library. Instead of clambering to the highest heights of the shelves, he burrowed around in the lowest shelves hoping to uncover some buried gem no one had paid attention to for twenty years. More, if he was lucky.

A deep shadow fell over him. Harry was almost entirely under a shelf. He looked back and saw two enormous (and muddy) boots. He squirmed out and looked up, up, and again. Hagrid didn’t have any trouble looking at the high shelves, but the low ones?

“Hi, Hagrid. Can I help you find something?”

Hagrid whipped his head back and forth. From Harry’s perspective it looked like he was being strangled by his beard.

“I’m down here.”

“Oh! Hm.” Hagrid lowered his voice, crouching down to get closer. “Jes’ doing a bit o’ reading up. Been a bit since I was last in here.”

“I like looking for overlooked books. Do books sing to you, Hagrid?”

Hagrid started to scratch his chin and nearly put the book he was holding up his nose. “Not so I ever noticed.” The book was bound in green leather and embossed with a dragon with wings spread out. It was hard to read the lettering, but he caught the words ‘dragon-keeping’.

“I bet that’s interesting. Will you let me know when you’re done so I can read it? I find the best books are the ones that other people are reading first; funny how that happens.”

“Ain’t nowt borin’ about dragons. Tell you what, next time you drop by fer a cuppa we’ll have a natter about ‘em.” Hagrid winked.

“I’ll do that, soon,” Harry said, pleased to be invited anywhere. Also, Hagrid was about to burst from his secret and for Harry to let himself be told it would be a mercy.

“Ooooo.” Harry was leaning in so far to the table that his legs were dangling. “It’s utterly splendid, Hagrid.” That the egg was so large and bronze green in colour was a wonder. The splendour came from the magic slowly spiralling out of it as if the dragon was coming through a portal from a world that was made for giants and dragons and simurghs. And whoever Summer’s people were that would not be labelled like a butterfly collection, pinned in a glass case.

The egg started to rock back and forth holding them mesmerised. Harry kicked his legs and made it up onto the edge of the table. On the other side, Hagrid crouched, his eyes level with the egg.

Cracks appeared; shards of egg fell away in increasingly large pieces until the dragonet inside uncurled and struck out with the wet edges of its wings. Fierce from the first, it arched its neck and gaped its jaws. With a mighty croak, a ribbon of fire coiled from between its fangs and vanished into a shimmer of heat.

Harry fell off the table and landed laughing. “He’s beautiful. Or is he a she?”

“The book said it was hard to tell with a baby. But he is a beauty, he is that.” Hagrid sighed gustily. “You’d better go, Harry. I’ve got to look after him—oo, he’ll need a name…” The big man started to bustle about and Harry rolled out of the way of his big feet.

“Right. Congratulations, Hagrid. It’s a dragon.”

“Well, of course it is; anyone can see that.” He cooed at the dragon. “D’ye know yer mummy yet? Bernard? Nah, that won’t do…”

Harry made his exit discreetly though opening and closing the heavy wooden door was not quiet. The wooden door. In the wooden cottage. With wooden furniture and a baby dragon that was already breathing fire.

“Oh, bugger,” he said.

The next couple of days were busy with classwork. Doing something about the dragonet seemed more important, and he would give it priority — if he knew what to do. He tried to make himself open to inspiration by doodling dragons and hanging around Draco Malfoy.

Draco clobbered him with a Twitchy-Ears hex. “That’s what you get for eaves-dropping, Potter,” he smirked.

“Oh, I wasn’t listening to what you were saying. I was hoping to be inspired by your presence alone.”

“You are utterly mad. Barking babbling bonkers.”

“Said the Slytherin sneering snidely. He had a headache from eating haddock; he counted unicorns in a paddock. Finally he formed a fist… haha, like rock, and flattened his foe with a hard knock.” Harry didn’t start out by describing Malfoy’s actions, but he ended up that way. He took a step back and bounced off Goyle. The fist travelled towards his nose. His ears were still twitching. Harry leaned to the side. He was completely off balance and Malfoy’s fist slid past his ear. He staggered onto Malfoy, or hugged him.

It was a matter of perspective, really. He gazed deep into Malfoy’s startled silver eyes. “So do you have your own dragons at home or is it just a name?”

“People don’t own dragons, you imbecile!” Malfoy shoved him away. Harry felt it coming and made a frog motion with his body that sent him tumbling out of the clump of Slytherins, though a foot landed a grazing kick on his bum.

“Just a name, got it. You know, you don’t feel as pointy as you look.” Harry bounced to his feet. His hip twinged; he rubbed it.

“I do not look pointy,” Malfoy snapped, his face wrinkling up towards his nose.

“That time I said ‘the pointy one’, everyone knew I meant you. Even you knew I meant you.” Draco glared at him and Harry hurried on. “Not that that’s bad. You’re not pointy in a bad way. It’s sort of pointy the way a castle is pointy so that it looks all castle-y and you look all Draco-y.” Harry’s tongue was certainly a Gryffindor.

Draco’s eyes narrowed. In his best (not that great) Snape imitation, he drawled, “Perhaps the word you are striving for is ‘elegant’.”

“Sure, that will do. I appreciate your help with word choice!”

Draco tried drawling, ‘You’re welcome.” He looked both irritated and confused, but that was his problem not Harry’s. He huffed away, trailing jibes, sneers, and flunkies.

The Flitbabblers gathered around Harry, late to the fray but game. A few Gryffindors following the scent of snake blood jeered back in support of anyone non-Slytherin, except for Hermione Granger, who handed him his book satchel. She’d been made a henchwoman of the quest.

“Why be nice to that prat anyway? He’s the worst of them, the ponciest and snobbiest,” Michael sneered in his best Draco imitation (not that great).

“I was being truthful. I really did appreciate being given the right word for what I was trying to say. It bothers me when I’m trying to say something and I know what I mean but the words aren’t there but I know there are words if only I knew them to say them.” Harry sighed in a way he would describe as lugubrious if he knew that word. “I need to read more books, but there are so many of them!”

This raised an ironical cheer (which Harry took to be sincere) from all nearby Ravenclaws.

Hermione Granger said dreamily, “I’ll never forget my parents giving me my own copy of ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’ for my ninth birthday.”

The Ravenclaws and Gryffindors aggregately wore a ‘how was Granger not sorted Ravenclaw?’ expression that needed a word as they wore it so often. Resortment? Dissortment? Polysortment? Asortment? Antisortment? Postsortment? Malsortment? Transsortment? As Hogwarts lacked English language and composition curriculum, a proper designation might never be made, unless some soul was visited by the Muse of Neologisms.

Kevin reopened the can of worms. “So you think Malfoy is elegant?”

“I’m not sure I have a grasp of what elegant is. It seems like a matter of opinion, and it’s Malfoy’s face so he should get to weigh in.”


	23. When the Storm Comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doing something about dragons is bound to get you into trouble. Ask any D&D player.

_‘For the elemental beings go_   
_About my table to and fro._   
_In flood and fire and clay and wind,_   
_They huddle from man's pondering mind’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘To Ireland in the Coming Times’_

He took his problems to the tree in which he would see Summer if she would be there. Today, she would not be. In many ways it was not a very Summer-y day. Clouds blustered about the sky throwing deep cool shadows below them and dragging chilly winds across the kingcups by the lake-edge.

Harry put his hand on the tree. It had friendly looking bark. “Dragons are amazing. I would love to have a dragon companion, but this is not about what I want. This is a baby dragon. He needs a true home where he can fly and flame and feed.”

“Canst not fly and flame and feed here?” The voice was male; he stood so enmeshed in the tree shadow that its branches grew from his head like horns. That he was one of Summer’s kind, Harry did not doubt. “What has fed, may flame to freedom, and fly.” His hair was red—not a friendly Weasley red—it was deep and glowing as if fire could bleed. Where it was not braided it spiked like flames. Some of that fire was in the yellow amber of his eyes. Like Summer’s, his eyes also were runed in marching lines of figures that were thicker in stroke.

Harry was in trouble. He had opened his big mouth of his own free will, after all. Now he’d been given a horrible riddle that he had no trouble understanding. The dragonet would attack Hagrid, burn down the hut, and go flying out into Scotland. It was his nature to be fierce and deadly. That’s why the Ministry of Magic would only capture him again, or kill him. This world was too small for dragons.

Tears filled his eyes. “Hagrid has an honest heart. This human world is too small for him, too, and he loves the wild and fearsome creatures of magic. But he is human, too. I don’t want him hurt. It’s hard to be of two worlds.” The golden eyes were watchful and unfriendly. It was his turn. “If I offered you a name, would you have use for it?”

“The stars have names, though those below know not if they regard them.” He held a long stave at his side and rubbed his cheekbone against the tip. It was subtly curved and intricately carved, the ends notched—an unstrung bow.

The tawny shade of his eyes and the cat claws in his voice made Harry think of lions, but lions were not enough. He opened his mouth. “I offer you the name Aslan.” He wondered if the gentry read children’s fiction, and if he would get stuck full of arrows. Otherwise it was a fine name. Aslan was not a tame lion.

The golden eyes narrowed. “I wonder that I have never seen a dove caw like a crow. I offer you the name Amergin, an you would take it up.”

Harry squirmed. He couldn’t help it under that scornful gaze. What was there to do? He chose to come to the tree; he chose to speak his thoughts; he chose to see Aslan—otherwise, he would not have seen him. “I will be called Amergin, then, under your eyes.”

Aslan glanced towards Hogwarts, but also above it at the mountains, or the sky, before giving Harry his attention again. “What is free that crawls and does not fly, that builds a cage in which to die?”

He knew this. He took some deep breaths to calm his racing mind. It seemed too easy. Perhaps there was some sting or catch or deeper meaning. “A caterpillar that dies to become a butterfly.” That was relating to their conversation about the dragonet. The worse thing he could do now would be to ask the question that he most wanted the answer to: why was Aslan here? Summer loved him and still made it plain that she didn’t care to be questioned about her motives. After all, the simple answer was that Aslan was here to see him. Aslan knew of him before their meeting, in a similar manner to Snape. Perhaps he was also here because of the dragonet. Harry thought of that moment when the egg broke open.

A poem started to bubble up in his brain and he began fitting rhymes to it. A bit was stolen, but it fit. He thought he was conveying the message he wanted to give. The time he took to polish it would be nothing to Summer’s patience. How like her was Aslan?

“What is a world where lives but one, who’s like a chick that has no bone; a door that opens just one way; a home where one can no more stay?”

“It is a jewel without a crown; it is a sun without a down. It is a promise never said, it is an egg that no bird laid.” 

The answer came as if with no thought at all though the metaphorical sweat still ran from Harry’s imaginary brow. “Wow,” he breathed out. Aslan raised an eyebrow the tiny fraction that measured what a piffling effort he held this.

In the way that Harry took the time he needed to compose his poem riddle, Aslan acted as if he had all time at his disposal to look Harry up and down (inside and out) in the course of forming his next question. Harry’s sweat become more than metaphorical; it shivered him in the fitful breeze. The clouds were piling up into ever more fantastical shapes which they did all the time over Scotland whether Muggle or Magical property was below.

“The land thrusts the mountains up and the wind grinds them down. The clouds rise in airy peaks from which the rain is flown. The twig lets the acorn drop from which the oak is grown. What design must delve so low and stone with stone to crown?”

The words fit into Harry’s mind. He did not understand them so much as he saw them. The Scottish mountains began to vanish in curtains of rain. The tree swayed and the ends of Aslan’s hair smoked around a headdress of antlers. Up the hill he could hear the groan of the castle doors as students hurried inside. His two worlds were colliding. His two veins were bleeding.

“A castle.” There was more answer to find than that, but though such as Summer and Aslan had time, time had Harry. “If I stay until the storm comes, will it come to me?”

“Those who wait for the storm to come are as ridden as those who are overtaken.”

Harry’s feet wanted to run, but courtesy stayed him; also it itched him between the shoulderblades to turn his back on Aslan. He bowed, backed a few steps to put some of the tree between them, then turned and ran to Hagrid’s hut. He flung himself at the door and pushed his face against it.

Don’t look back. This is not the time to look back. If he saw what he might see, he might not unsee it.

Raindrops laced the wind now. Light flickered at the edge of sight: distant lightning and the thunder of a storm clearing its throat. He knocked at the door. Hagrid opened it and he tumbled in. Fang whined from under Hagrid’s bed.

“Harry, y’should be up at supper, not prancing about in the rain. Yer shivering like a leaf. Come by the fire.” The big man glanced out the door. “It’s working up a fair gale outside. Best you wait it out. I’ll make us a spot of tea—now, Norbert, you don’t go out, it’s too cold for a little ‘un.” He fended off the dragonet with a rawhide chew toy. It was already well shredded. Fang sighed from his hiding spot.

Respecting Fang’s sense of self-preservation, Harry made a wide circle around Norbert and found a nook by the hearth. Norbert twisted his neck to look back at Harry and fanned his wings. The ends weren’t very far away from the walls. Hagrid clucked proudly. “Look at him making sure yeh see what a beauty he is.”

Norbert blew out a thin plume of flame. Though it ended before it reached Harry’s face, he wasn’t sure if the heat he felt was from Norbert or the fireplace. “He’s gorgeous,” said Harry. He watched the dragonet’s every move in wary awe. If the Mirror of Erised were there, it would have shattered from swapping between H’rry the dragon-rider and Harry the dragon.

Brightness snapped through the door cracks and window shutters; thunder shook the whole hut. The chimney belched smoke and sparks. Norbert’s wings thrashed the air; rampant, he bayed the storm with his infant roars.

The door opened. It parted from the frame with no more sound than a leaf stem parting from a twig. Even the hinges cried no warning. There Aslan stood, storm cloud dark and lightning crowned. His chest and arms were bare. He held one hand out. Norbert leapt from the table. His talons drew bloody runes on Aslan’s arm. He bit gouges out of Aslan’s chest and neck. Aslan’s face did not alter its unsmiling mask. The lion eyes took the firelight within and held Hagrid.

The dragonet clung to Aslan. With wings half-spread on either side of the bare torso and neck twined around Aslan’s throat, jewel eyes glittering, Norbert looked like like a piece of living armour. Wind and rain painted them with red tattoos.

“Blood is the price for all we do.” So Aslan spoke, and was done, and was gone.

Hagrid could move fast once he started moving. He bolted out the door only to stop within the reach of the light and scan the stormy landscape in vain. Harry followed him out and tried to drag him back in. “They’re gone, Hagrid.” He had little less hope of moving Hogwarts than Hagrid. Lightning struck the top of the Astronomy tower and Harry flinched into Hagrid’s large if dubious shelter. The gamekeeper finally noticed him and dragged him back inside. He started to sniffle.

Harry made him a cup of tea and sat with him as Hagrid wept fat tears until his beard was a glutinous mass. It was awesomely gross.

“Shoulda knowed that sort might be about. The white hind is a sign of ‘em.”

Harry looked into his tea. He felt he’d tried to do right but wasn’t sure if he’d done right; suspected Hagrid would take it poorly. Dealings with the fair folk were better left unspoken. By telling, would he be helping Hagrid or just easing his own guilt? He sighed.

“I know, Harry, I miss him too. Such a brave little fellow, breathing fire right out of the egg. Someday he’ll be a fine big dragon. I wonder if he’ll remember his mummy?” Hagrid whipped out a flag of a handkerchief and blew his nose in competition with the thunder.

Harry considered that he didn’t like Summer being referred to as ‘that sort’. It was a sign of how Hagrid would react to finding out about Harry’s kin. He didn’t know all wizards knew about the other beings of the magical world. If some wizard, somewhere, somewhen, hadn’t tried to kill or capture the gentry, then Harry didn’t know anything about wizards. He was only eleven. Learning to keep his mouth shut was probably a good skill to develop, even if it was one Aunt Petunia would want him to learn.

They roasted potatoes in the hot ashes of Hagrid’s hearth and ate sausage slices fried crispy. Harry wasn’t a fan of their gamey taste, but food was food. Hagrid told meandering stories about his work with the Forbidden Forest. They would start nowhere and go nowhere being impelled by Hagrid’s distracted misery. Harry made little encouraging comments. He wanted to hear more as long as Hagrid felt like talking. Centaurs? Acromantulas? He could hardly wait to take Care of Magical Creatures in third year. Unicorns — now, that was magic on the hoof. “I wish I could go into the forest.”

Hagrid smiled. “It’s beautiful in there, it is. Aside from me, not many go there. Professor Sprout and Professor Snape go in to collect rare plants and potion ingredients. The Headmaster talks to the centaurs occasionally. They’re standoffish. Live deep in the Forest, they do; they can’t be lettin’ Muggles have sight o’ them.”

Hagrid insisted on walking Harry back to the castle under the shelter of his umbrella. Since a good chunk of the rain was blowing sideways, Harry still got wet. Walking back into the castle was odd. As magical as Hogwarts was, he still felt like a balloon that had been wandering around happily inflated only to have all the air sucked out and be stuffed back into a package. Aslan’s butterfly riddle buzzed at him; it was a stinging, buzzing, fluttering pack of riddles.

He tried to put it out of his mind by working away at his homework and was successful for a time. Later, in bed, he could not settle to sleep. The remnants of the storm were still grumbling past; the lightning was a distant flicker at the edge of the windows. He’d never seen a bolt so close as the one that struck the Astronomy tower. They had a lightning rod on top of it in addition to the charms that protected students. Did it leave a mark? What signs did lightning draw?

Under the cover of the invisibility cloak, Harry slipped out of the Ravenclaw dormitory. He was cat-light on his feet and walked wary of his rival, Mrs. Norris. Filch had not been at the door this afternoon as he usually was to take care of the tracked-in rain. If he had been avoiding the storm then, was he patrolling the halls now? He, at least, tended to mutter to himself or the cat as he moved about. The teachers were there to look for students breaking curfew. They probably had learnt to be stealthy and to detect the sneaky.

Being really good at sneaky would be another useful skill to have. And if he got caught even though he was invisible, they’d take the cloak. Harry eeled himself behind a statue and decloaked. The uncanny thing folded down as small as a handkerchief and he tucked it into his pocket for emergencies.

Up ahead he heard voices. Lurking, he listened.

“Do get a good night’s sleep, Pomona. I’ll take it from here.” That voice was undoubtedly Professor McGonagall’s.

“Thank you, Minerva. It’s been quiet. Perhaps for once the little lambs are all asleep in the fold.”

“I would be obliged if the Weasley twins would sleep somewhere other than in History class.”

Professor Sprout snickered. The sound of footsteps parting ways commenced; faded.

Harry took advantage of knowing where two patrollers were to move from his hiding place. McGonagall sounded like she was heading towards the Astronomy tower, too. He followed at a cautious distance, ducking below portraits. Again his experiences on the Quest served him well, for he knew the ways of portraits and that most of them slept at night as if they were living people. The ghosts had their particular places to haunt and were seldom found away from them. He wasn’t due to pass any of those places that he knew of. Only Peeves was free-roaming, but he was likely to avoid McGonagall.

Crouching low, he peeped around the corner. McGonagall was passing the entrance to the Astronomy tower. The way was clear. There weren’t any portraits on the stairwell itself except for one landing that led to Professor Sinistra’s office. Classes were over for the night, but she might still be stirring. The Astronomy professor had a different schedule than all the other staff and was rarely seen during the day.

Was that a giggle? He’d heard mention of couples going up the Astronomy tower for whatever teenager-ish doings they did. Maybe he should have done this in the daytime. His eagle bed was missing him. Harry risked a scurry to the foot of the stairs leading to the top of the tower. He flattened himself to the floor as two larger and less stealthy forms headed down. Their noise made perfect cover for his.

Despite his growing sleepiness, his steps quickened as he went up. Something had been there—lightning, magical even to Muggles, though they might not use that word. He felt something was still there to be found. Slowly moving up the stairs, he tried to remember what the outside of the tower looked like. He’d never been up so far. They set up their telescopes on the parapet level that he’d just left. The tower rose to a tall cone like a wizard hat. Not like Aslan’s headdress, with its many-pronged antlers. How did he walk among trees like that? Deer did it well enough, mustn’t they?

There was a trap door above him. He could see that, though it was very dark. Oh, for the eyes of a cat! He ran his fingers around the edge and found something under his fingers. It felt like a latch.

Listen. Still there were thunderous murmurs from the sky. The wind wuthered about and Harry fancied he could feel the stonework of the tower sway. Well, he was not up here to be safe. He pushed the latch and it ratcheted open like a crack of lightning.

It would be kind of hilarious, really, if he had just locked it instead of unlocking it.

He moved up a step, pushing upwards with his head and raised arm. A draught shot through the opening like a ghost and whistled past him down the stairs. He scrambled up and let the trap down behind him.

The room was cramped and square with rounded corners. On each side was a slender window casement. A few panes were broken letting in light and weather. Something crunched underfoot: glass. Perhaps it had broken from the shock of the lightning.

He had never been up so high. The view from the windows was amazing. He could see little of the ground, but the clouds were beginning to break apart and the moon peeked through them to see itself in the lake. Such a pure, bright light. What magic would he be, if he could pluck that light and drink; if he could spin it like straw into gold?

Harry never asked afterwards what made him look up. Magic, of course.

There in the centre of the ceiling, was the metal base of the lightning rod. Hanging pendulous from it like a rain drop was a ball of light. Up he looked, wide-eyed, wide-mouthed, and in it dropped as if he were a baby bird to be fed.

He swallowed. Of course.

He did not turn into a dragon. He did not turn into a ghost. If he turned into anything, he turned into more of himself, which would have happened anyway. Only now, he was Harry who swallowed lightning.

That didn’t stop him from waiting and hoping to turn into a dragon, no matter that this would be a bad room to be a dragon in unless he was big enough to burst it open.

No longer hoping to turn into a dragon made him tired. He yawned, then snapped his mouth shut again. If he was going to swallow lightning, he wanted to keep it down.

Harry began the long, careful trip back to Ravenclaw tower. Here was the downside of breaking curfew. He still had to be careful, only now he was tired and his bed was calling. How did the Weasley twins keep this up?

He got down the first flight of stairs, listened for the sound of anyone stirring, then headed for the landing. As the stairwell came into view, something stirred the air far more silently than Harry had hope of. Silent despite the chains that trailed him, the Bloody Baron floated in from the parapet, his grim gaze finding Harry. The silver blood streaks gleamed from his clothes.

Harry dove for the stairs as if he were on a broom. His feet must have had some contact, for his footsteps hammered like his heartbeat. In flight, he forgot caution and flung himself into the corridor. Hands seized struck out of the dark and seized him. It was Filch.


	24. Detention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry always wanted to go into the Forbidden Forest. It sounded so magical. To his sorrow, he was correct.

  
_‘The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere_   
_The ceremony of innocence is drowned’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’_

In the morning, Harry had been assigned detention and Ravenclaw was fifty points down. Most of the Ravenclaws were mad at him, but the most painful reaction was Flitwick’s disappointed look. Harry’s explanation of wanting to see where the lightning had been lessened it, but the little Professor shook his head. “You could have gone in the morning, you know. Curiosity is a good tool but a poor master.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.” As correct as Flitwick was, Harry knew in his heart that if he’d waited for daylight he’d never have swallowed lightning. And yet, and yet… what did it profit him to gain lightning at the cost of other people’s regard? It was like not telling Hagrid about Aslan. How was one supposed to live with secrets? Maybe that’s why Snape was so cranky all the time, but it didn’t explain Dumbledore’s serenity.

Maybe swallowing lightning would save his life someday. Or maybe it would kill him. All he could do now was take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. He set himself to working as hard as he could to make points for Ravenclaw. One time, in Transfiguration, he got his hand up before Hermione Granger and answered the question correctly. Professor McGonagall gave Ravenclaw 5 points and Harry a look that said she knew exactly what he was up to. So did Hermione.

It was a good thing he’d concealed his cloak. Sorry, Ravenclaw House, better points lost than his invisibility cloak.

He even went so far as to ask Professor Binns for extra credit work (he waited until Hermione left the classroom). For his pains he was assigned a book on Elfric the Eager. He found that the book was written in medieval Latin. Madam Pince suggested he ask the Fat Friar for help. The Fat Friar insisted that he share the project and the credit with Thabisa Harris, a Hufflepuff Muggleborn whose History of Magic grade could use some bolstering. Apparently she was upset by Binns inability to understand he was a ghost in some way that hindered her studying his subject.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said when Harry asked. “My parents told me to let them and the school authorities work it out. They’ve had trouble before with a clash of views. They emigrated from South Africa before I was born.” She glared in the direction of Hermione Granger. Harry elected not to ask.

They took extensive notes as the Fat Friar translated the substance of each page. According to the book, Elfric was part-Goblin, like Professor Flitwick. Harry was not sure he wanted to know how such things happened. Like Thabisa’s beef with Hermione, it was none of his business anyway.

“That’s probably why he assigned it,” Thabisa said darkly. “One of the older Hufflepuffs told me that Professor Binns and Professor Flitwick don’t get on.”

“Now, now,” said the Friar. “We are not here to gossip. Facts, children, or at least, the content of the book that purports to be factual.”

It was then that Harry realised he’d opened his big mouth again and got caught up in someone else’s fight. Resolving to find time to mention his project discreetly to Professor Flitwick, he kept working.

Harry’s detention was delayed. He watched the staff at meals and they seemed to be talking of something troubling. Even Dumbledore’s calm was less unruffled. On a Monday morning in the last week of May, Flitwick told him to report to Mr. Filch’s office on Tuesday evening at eight. “Also, come by the Charms classroom after your Magical Theory class, if you please.” He did not look happy, but it was a disquiet turned inwards and not at Harry.

When Harry arrived, he found Flitwick marking a lesson plan on the board. It was a relay race competition for teams to perform spells consecutively, such as one person casting a water making charm and the next casting a drought charm. He hoped he’d be able to play five years from now.

“Ah, Mr. Potter. Thank you for coming by. I wanted to talk to you about your home situation.”

Flitwick did not look happy, therefore, “I have to go back, don’t I?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Living with your mother’s kin allowed the placement of unique protection that could not be replicated anywhere else. That said, the Headmaster is planning to speak with your aunt and uncle himself to make sure that they at least treat you with the common decency due anyone if not the affection you deserve, which cannot be compelled.” He brightened a little. “I myself have made some small efforts to assist improving their desire to cooperate. Furthermore, I shall expect to hear from you regularly: once a week.”

“Er, sir? How will I write to you? I don’t have an owl.”

“Ah! I shall give you the proper address so that a letter sent through the Muggle mail service can be picked up and routed to Hogwarts. I reside here all year around except for my August fly-fishing trip. This year I’m going to Belize for tarpon.” His eyes gleamed with a light that reminded Harry of the goblins at Gringotts.

Harry reported as ordered to Filch’s office. To his surprise, Ronald Weasley and Seamus Finnegan joined him. “What are you in for, Potter?” Finnegan asked.

“Out after curfew. You?”

“Burnt down part of Greenhouse 3. Fire likes me, what can I say?”

Harry looked to Ron. “I was with him. Don’t ask.” He rolled his eyes.

“I had a planting of pipe-weed in there. It was ready to harvest,” Finnegan said sadly.

“He lit it on fire by trying to make a tiny Lumos.”

“You have a special talent, Finnegan,” Harry had to admit.

“Sprout was hopping mad because her venomous tentacula was coughing. All during our last class every time it coughed she spritzed a potion onto it and gave us such a glare.”

“In class with you?” 

“She put it on the far side of the greenhouse from us and hustled over there to check it every five minutes. It bombarded Justin Finch-Fletchley with spiky spore pods and he ducked under a table.”

Before Harry could ask what Finch-Fletchley had done to attract the attention of the plant, Filch came down the hall. “There you are. Come with me.” He looked more than usually grumpy. “And I’d given those chains an extra polishing. Hanging by your toes, you should be, the lot of you. Well maybe you’ll wish you were after what’s in store for you.” He led them out of the castle and turned them over to Hagrid.

So, because he was out after curfew… they were sending him into the Forbidden Forest… well, did he care if they made sense? He got to go into the forest!

“Finnegan, you’re with me. Try not to set anything on fire,” Hagrid said. “Potter, Weasley, I’m sending Fang with you. He’s good at findin’ things. If he runs, follow him. He’ll run away from anything dangerous.”

“Something in the forest has been attacking unicorns. Look for ‘em. If they’re hurt, you’ll see traces of silver blood. Don’t touch it. If you find a unicorn, send up light from your wands and I’ll come to you. Just stick to Fang, he always knows how to get home. Seek, Fang.”

The big hound moved off at a sedate pace that the boys could easily keep up with. Harry kept nearly tripping from swivelling his head around to look. “I wonder why we have to look at night? I can hardly see anything. Lumos only goes so far.”

“I’m not sure I want to see anything,” Ron said practically. “What I can see is scary enough.”

“I mean, why are we doing this at night and not during the daytime?”

“Good point. I guess the unicorns are being attacked at night?”

“Oh, right. Have you ever seen a unicorn?”

“No, just drawings of them. They always say the pictures don’t do them justice.”

“So what were you going to do with pipeweed?”

“Well, Seamus said that if you pass around a pipe of magic grown pipeweed, and everyone puffs, you have adventure dreams together.”

“Aren’t we having an adventure now?”

“Yes. And detention, and homework, and something’s killing real unicorns.”

Harry tried explaining Bertrand Russell’s book and the dubious reality of reality.

“That’s too Ravenclaw for me. It’s the reality we’ve got, innit?”

Harry had to admit that Ron had a point there. “Say, how do you feel about sausage?”

“Bacon is b..blood. Look. Over there.” His voice dropped with each syllable. His trembling finger pointed.

Fang whuffled mournfully at a streak of silver carried along the leaves of a bush, and angled his body away from it as he followed the trail. They didn’t need his nose to follow. The moon shone through breaks in the canopy as if to show each streak and drop of blood. When Harry found a way past it, before him lay a unicorn on the ground. Silver blood pooled around it. It was growing dim, like a thin veil of cloud.

Darkness crept towards the unicorn in an unnatural motion. It lifted up showing the silhouette of a black hood. The figure bent, eclipsing the pale sheen of dead innocence. The wet sound of it feeding wormed into Harry’s ears. His guts clenched.

Fang fled past him, yelping like a toy terrier but in a big bass voice. Harry staggered against Ron, who grabbed his arm. “C’mon.” Harry couldn’t turn away.

The hood lifted, revealing a mouth frosted with gore. Harry’s scar burned hotter than ever. Green light flashed in his eyes and his feet lost their nimbleness. Ron bolted after Fang. Harry managed a few steps before tangling his foot on a root and landing on his knees. He turned, looking over his shoulder as he scrabbled away on all fours. The figure rose, death black and tarnished silver.

If Harry hadn’t been so terrified, he wouldn’t have been able to move at all. He kept trying to get his feet under him and the pain in his head would drive him down again. 

Something large passed over him. He could feel the impact of its weight landing, and hear a cry of challenge.

  
The pain subsided. Harry realised his face was wet and wiped at it. It was blood. The lashes of one eye were gummed together by it. His glasses were fogged and splattered with drops of blood. He put them away and looked up with the one clear eye.

It was a centaur. It, or rather he, was everything a centaur should be: a powerfully built sleek horse body with the muscular torso of a man. Harry looked up into the noble face. “Well met.”

“Greetings to you. It is not safe here, especially for you, Harry Potter. You keep perilous company.” The centaur leaned down and helped Harry get back to his feet. “My name is Firenze.”

Something glinted on Harry’s hand. He’d put it down in a splash of unicorn blood. So beautiful even murdered it ached his heart. How did he get clean of something so pure that it was his touch corrupted it? He wasn’t going to wipe it off on his shirt as if it were mud. His spine tingled. Magic spiralled through his hand as if he were casting a spell, and the shining stuff turned to a fine mist and vanished from his skin.

The centaur shook his head. “We must linger here no more. Come, I will let you ride on my back.” When Harry was seated and clinging firmly if awkwardly to his waist, the centaur sprang forward with a mighty surge of muscle. Harry was not sure how he didn’t slide of the centaur’s sleek hide, but since he wasn’t, he stopped worrying about it.

  
They ran into Ron. He’d ducked behind a tree, but the centaur spotted him. “Come out, human child. You must get back to the castle.”

“I came back. Then I was lost. Are you all right, Harry?” He edged from behind the tree. With a supple bend of his human torso, Firenze handed him up before Harry.

“No worries,” said Harry.

There were so many other things more worrisome. Like, other centaurs who were less friendly. He was glad to make it back to Hagrid. He would have to think of something to do for the gamekeeper to show his appreciation of his kindness and remember his debt to Firenze.

It was inevitable he’d end up in the infirmary again. Madame Pomfrey cleaned him up and probed at the scar. It was hot to the touch, but the pain was mostly gone. Flitwick came to look at it. Dumbledore came to look at it. Snape came to look at it. There were no friendly shadows to be had. Inevitably, they had no answers for him. Questions, yes, about all that he’d seen. Madame Pomfrey gave him some bruise salve to rub on where he had been banged up, and sent him back to his dormitory. Flitwick walked him back.

They paused before the enchanted door knocker. Flitwick patted his arm. “I know you’ve been through a dreadful experience tonight. No well-meaning adult would wish a child to be exposed to the evils that exist in this world. But to pretend they do not exist would be worse. A unicorn is where symbol meets truth.”

Harry was not sure he understood this. He’d think about it later. “It’s not so much the unicorn, sir. That was horrible. The centaurs… they are hidden away because of the Statute of Secrecy, like dragons, and merfolk, and goblins. It feels like they are being squeezed out of the world. Muggles know what a unicorn is. They don’t believe they exist, but they know. And if all the unicorns died, then it would be the same for wizards. Just the knowing.” He sniffled and quickly dashed a hand over his leaky eyes.

“Only the symbol, and no longer truth. Yes. The Statute of Secrecy protects us by trying to make the world smaller. We gain and we lose. I have no comfort for you, Mr. Potter. But you comfort me, that a boy of your tender years thinks of such things.”

Harry rapped the door knocker. It animated and asked, “In your mind's eye you see a dark room with no door or window. / How will you get free or will you dwell ever in shadow?”

He glared at the knocker. He’d read a version of this riddle, though in much simpler language. “I stop imagining the room. Did it listen to us?”

“It must listen to hear answers, must it not? It is an ancient and well-crafted enchantment, attributed to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. If you will take the riddle and its answer as advice, it is taken best before bedtime. Goodnight, Mr. Potter.”


	25. The Conquest of Hogwarts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry flails about trying to find out who 'Amergin' was (is?) If only he had an Internet connection. The Flitbabblers come to the conclusion of their quest.

  
_‘…he who journeys through storm and darkness must needs think and think.” —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

The library spread out before him, above him, to the sides. If there was somewhere a book that had his new name in it, he could not make out its song. It was a person name, like Aslan, and not a object name, like Leaf, he felt sure. 

This search, he could not share with anyone. Even if no one knew the name when he spoke it, he would still have spoken it, and they still would have heard. He wasn’t even sure how to spell it. He was fairly sure it started with an A. AVersomething, with a back of the throat kind of sound to it. A bit Irish or Welsh or Scottish. Or maybe some ancient language of the Isles that neither wizard nor Muggle knew. Why should Aslan make it easy, when he’d given him a fictional lion’s name?

It wasn’t an insult. You couldn’t name just anyone Aslan. The name he’d taken would tell him a lot about Aslan’s intentions.

He stood before the card catalogue and tried to make space for luck to happen. It was very quiet in the library today. No singing. The only sounds were those of study: the flap of book pages, the scritching of quills, the wriggling of tired bums on hard wooden seats. 

What kind of name might Aslan give him? Had he understood his own? He hadn’t seemed confused. He’d accepted it. If it fit in with the other things Aslan had said to him, it would carry some deeper, troubling meaning. He’d assumed it was a proper name and not a word, like Leaf, albeit in another language. So, like Aslan, a name beginning with A. If he were in a Muggle library, he’d look through folklore. For wizards, it could be history instead.

There was no help for it but to flip through cards in the drawers, one by one. His solace was that the card catalogue was self-sorting. A card put in the wrong place would migrate back to its proper one. Eventually. 

It began with A. An old friend: ‘Arsachd Makaris’. At long last, it had been re-shelved. Archaic Gaelic was still not in his skill set, but he could look for a proper name beginning with A. If the Fat Friar could translate church Latin, perhaps another ghost could translate this book. He took it to a table and began scanning the text. It was a printed book at least, so the letters were regular though the words were somehow weirder for being foreign in mostly ordinary letters instead of Chinese or Arabic writing.

The Fat Friar shook his head. “I’m sorry, my boy. We’ve no ghosts of that era among us. As this is historical, you should try Professor Binns, or for the language, Professor McGonagall or Professor Rough. That’s all pure speculation, but even if they can’t help you themselves, they may be able to find someone who can.”

Professor Binns looked at his book. “That’s a very poor source. What you want is Arbuthnot’s ‘History and Goblins.’ Now that’s solid scholarship, Mr. Pettigrew. I’m sure there’s a copy in the library.”

Professor McGonagall shook her head. “I speak modern Scots Gaelic, but this is an older form. Try asking Madam Pince for a translation source. She may have some contacts.”

Professor Rough took the book into his hands. Leaning back in his seat, he paged through it. “This old thing again. It’s well made, at least. I read this sixty years ago. It’s not very scholarly, but collects some fine tales.” He looked up at Harry. “I’m rusty on my old Gaelic, mind you. I had a glossary to help—I don’t know where that’s gone to.”

“So who are these ‘makers’?”

“They are legendary figures of the history of the British Isles. It specifically omits Merlin, as having been written of extensively. So there was, mm, Taliesin, of course, Wulfrun, Aneirin, ah, yes, and Amergin. One was Finnish… no, can’t recall it. It describes them as wizards who practised the old spell magic used before the Roman system came in.”

Harry tried not to perk up. “Oh, that’s handy. Would you help me write down a list of the names you remember so I can look them up separately? I suppose translating this would be a lot of work. Is there a spell to learn languages or translate written or spoken words?”

“There are spells to help you learn living languages. I’ll write the names down for you.” Rough picked a scrap of parchment and began writing in large, clear letters. “Keep in mind that in ancient times, spelling was less regulated than it was today. It adds to the difficulty of reading old texts, when they exist at all. Many cultures kept their work in an oral tradition for secrecy and with a feeling that words and thoughts of such importance should be only spoken with living breath, not written down like a shopping list. This is the main theme of Sangster’s book. So if the oral tradition is not passed down, we lose it.” The man slipped into lecture mode. “Few are moved to learn ancient languages when there is so little text to use it on. One has to have a real passion for the subject.”

Harry knew there were Muggle scholars who read ancient languages, but how well did they read them? The abyss of his not-knowing gaped wide again. It was not a comfortable feeling. Maybe that’s why Hermione Granger worked at school so hard.

Rough’s list was short but informational. Each name had a note about it on their known works and warning of variant name spellings. The last entry was simply a reference to ‘the Kalevala’, and ‘if there’s any real information it would be found at Durmstrang. Muggles made a fuss over the poetry.’ It was the entry for Amergin, ‘druid to the Milesian conquerors of Ireland’, that really interested Harry. He could only do so much in any given day to fill the void. (Did druids count as wizards?)

In September, the school year had stretched out before him and June looked as far away as Jupiter. Now it was here and exams loomed over them like a boulder on the edge of an eroding cliff. Everyone in his dorm had ink stains all around their finger nails. Terry Boot looked like he was wearing war paint. For the first exam, Transfiguration, Harry couldn’t eat breakfast, he was so wound up. Afterwards, it was done, it was over, and nothing he did would make a difference.

He looked at his Herbology notes. How much was he going to learn about the subject in the next hour? “You know what? If I don’t know all this stuff, it’s too late now,” he announced to the Ravenclaw common room. He was roundly shushed and hissed and glared at. There were chuckles to be heard, but their sources were keeping their heads down. Harry smiled and browsed through his notes. Here was the day he distracted the Slytherins. This was that day in November Professor Sprout had praised his mulching technique. He was still embarrassed about that time he’d confused wild garlic with white hellebore. 

He made it through the exam period with the same cheerful acceptance of fate. Only in Potions, in due of Professor Snape’s natural ferocity, did he show anxiety. For once, everyone brewed their potion alone. They had taken the written exam together with the Slytherin and Ravenclaw first years, earlier that week.

Friday they had free. “I think we are close to the end of the quest,” Terry said. “We started on a Friday, I’d like to end on a Friday.”

“Granger has her Potions practical exam Friday morning,” Lisa Turpin reminded them. “She’s been a good henchperson. Maybe Friday morning we can spend collating our quest notes and planning our route. We need to look for clues that take us where we haven’t been—fill in those empty spaces on the puzzle.” 

“I think there will always be empty spaces,” Harry said. “I’d like to check out a broom and think about where we’ve been from the outside. I’m still restricted from flying without an older student approved by Madam Hooch.”

“I like that idea,” said Lisa, “But we should ask if there are rules about flying over the castle.”

“Restricted airspace,” murmured unrepentantly Muggleborn Kevin.

Their last exam was Charms on Thursday afternoon. In Harry’s growing exuberance, his dancing pineapple attempted a spectacular finale by leaping up and double-kicking in the air. It over-rotated and landed awkwardly on its head. “I meant to do that?” he tried. Flitwick smiled and waved him away without further comment.

“End of exams means summer begins now,” said Mandy Brocklehurt, pulling her pony-tail free as they left the classroom.

Harry slipped away from the group and headed outside. Studying students sparsely populated the lawn, clustering under the shade of trees. The tree where he usually met Summer was one. He drifted around the edge of the lake towards the scrubby, marshy area near the boundary wall. The sun was hot on the back of his neck. The ground was getting squishy underfoot. He paused to look at the reflection of the clouds in the lake. A breeze ruffled the smooth surface and swayed the cotton sedge growing in clumps by the lake edge. Summer was crouched there. She held her palm outspread. Something small moved on it.

He slipped closer, trying to pick a dry path. Finally he gave up and took his trainers off, tieing them together by the lace ends and draping them over his shoulder. Mud and muck started squishing through his toes. Harry crouched down next to Summer. He could feel the strain of unaccustomed muscles working, whereas Summer was as steady as a deep-rooted tree. 

On her palm was a tiny frog that was mostly head and eyes. “The tadpoles are growing into froglets. The evenings are full of the songs of the living world.”

“I will…” his voice trailed off. “I don’t know what I will do other than go back to the Dursleys. That will be soon. I think it will be like trying to stuff myself into a cocoon again.”

“Leaf, my hero, that can never be.”

Her eyes were very cloudy today. He could feel the knowing of Aslan in them. There were no questions at him to ask today. They were his to answer. Now was Summer. He tried to think of something not stupid to say about Aslan. “He was scary. I was frightened. His eyes were like suns that never set.”

“You are becoming a poet, my Leaf.” Her voice carried the words like babies.

Harry was still wondering where his words had come from. He hadn’t thought of them until this moment, though he would never forget Aslan’s eyes any more than he would forget Summer’s.

There were tiny frogs sculling the waters around him. They sat on grass stems and floating leaves. It was so good, being alive.

Milo Sorrel had finished all his regular classes, but not his N.E.W.T.s. Nevertheless, he agreed to supervise Harry’s morning flight and was able to advise the Flitbabblers that they were not supposed to fly over Hogwarts, or go higher than the roof of the Great Hall as first years. He got permission from Madam Hooch to take them up two at a time to a higher altitude so that they could at least see the castle from above.

He laid out the rules in a solid, no-nonsense way that he made clear was as much about their safety and his responsibility for it as it was about mere rules. None of those willing to fly that high argued with him. Terry Boot rode tandem with Milo so he could use his back as a support to make sketches. Once their flight was done, they went to the Great Hall to lay out their sketches and the quest notes.

Finally, the Flitbabblers (plus one Gryffindor) huddled together at the foot of the grand staircase. Anthony cleared his throat.

“At last, brethren, we set forth on the final leg of this journey. We have fought long, we have fought hard. We have fought up, and we have fought down. Mostly importantly, we have fought together.” Su Li stood with squared shoulders and lifted chin.

Anthony took over. “And now, it shall pay off. Today we will find the end. Today, we will find victory. Huzzah!”

“Huzzah!” they all cheered, ignoring the snickers of other students.

They arranged themselves in marching order and climbed the stairs. After looking at all their material and the layout of the castle from above, they’d determined that though there were many blank areas under the castle (unless it was solid rock), they had detected no permitted ways down. Their biggest below surface find had been to reach the kitchens. Hermione was still complaining about the house elf labour issue. So, above it would be.

Their goal was the clock tower. They climbed to the room below the clock workings. It was a dull room, just a landing really, with only two windows to light the curved staircase going up to a trap door. “Time?” asked Anthony.

Hermione cast Tempus, being the only first year who reliably could. The wand motion was particularly finicky. “Two minutes of four o’clock.”

Kevin and Lisa went up to the trap door. Parvati Patel moved to the centre of the group. “We are come together in this final hour of our fellowship. Here we stand in the heart of Hogwarts, that beat that measures our days and orders our affairs. It calls us to wake and it sings us to our slumbers.” She started to blush. “But it is the heart, because we are here, all we students and staff, willing to pace our lives to the hands of the dial. For us, time is finite. We have come here, and in six years, we will come here for the last time. But Hogwarts shall go on. And we shall go on, out into the world taking what we learnt with us. Thank you, Hogwarts.”

“Thank you, Hogwarts,” they chorused. Su Li audibly sniffled and there were a few muffled little wet noises in other parts of the room.

They heard a clank above them as the hands swung into place, and a louder thunk. Working together, Kevin and Lisa pulled the lever of the trap door. But instead of it coming open, the entire ceiling rolled back showing a glass dome curving down towards them. The clock works moved above them, brass and steel, gold and glass. 

At each chime of the bells, a different figure presented itself. A gold and black badger sat up on its hind legs. A crimson and brass griffin stood with one paw lifted and its wings raised symmetrically, like a figure of heraldry. A silver and green snake slithered around into a coil and its tongue flickered on the air. And last, an eagle dropped from above, wings spread wide, feathers blue with bronze spines, its beak and claws black.

(Fifty points were awarded to Ravenclaw and five to Gryffindor.)

The ceiling rolled back over the dome. The Quest was complete and the adventurers filed down the stairs.

“We’ll miss this next year, when we have twice as much homework,” said Terry.

Su Li started to sniffle. “We have covered the name of *hic* Flitbabblers, with immortal *hic*—” she tried holding her breath to get rid of the hiccoughs but they erupted all the same.

“Glory,” said Lisa, helpfully slapping Su Li on the back.


	26. Into the Underworld

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> '"Curse it! curse it! curse it!" hissed Gollum. "Curse the Baggins! It's gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He's found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present."'
> 
> ...wait. Wrong story. Isn't it?

_‘ I believe when I am in the mood that all nature is full of people whom we cannot see, and that some of these are ugly or grotesque, and some wicked or foolish, but very many beautiful beyond any one we have ever seen, and that these are not far away when we are walking in pleasant and quiet places. Even when I was a boy I could never walk in a wood without feeling that at any moment I might find before me somebody or something I had long looked for without knowing what I looked for. And now I will at times explore every little nook of some poor coppice with almost anxious footsteps, so deep a hold has this imagination upon me.’ —William Butler Yeats, ‘The Celtic Twilight’_

Shadows were gathering. Harry lagged behind. Where did they come from? The clock tower stairs let out onto the third floor. The other Flitbabblers turned left towards the stairs leading to the Great Hall.

Harry heard music. It led him to the forbidden corridor and the door behind which was a three-headed dog, according to the Weasley twins. He put his hand against the door, listening, a faint memory stirring in his mind like the sight of a ghost’s tailcoat as it vanished into a wall.

The door was open. A small harp was playing to the sleeping beast. That Greek myth--Orpheus, or was it Morpheus? Did it matter? The shadows lay thick on a trap door next to where a drooling head lay on a massive paw. The path was laid before him. All that was certain was that if he turned back, he would not be offered this path again.

He pulled the trap door open and slipped into it. He could feel something under his feet. When his weight came down, it sagged a little but held him up.

Something coiled around him. It smelled like a plant. Well, he’d stepped on it in the dark. That was rude. He lay quietly and felt himself slowly passed down until he landed on the floor. He didn’t know what was above him, but beyond was an opening and a gleam of light. He followed it into a room full of flying keys. Given the handy broom nearby, that was too easy.

Next, a giant chessboard showed the aftermath of a game. The pieces lay strewn about. He couldn’t see another person, but perhaps they were on the other side of a piece.

Harry pulled his invisibility cloak out of his pocket and wrapped it around himself. On cat soft feet he sneaked past the pieces. They were starting to pull themselves back together. If they challenged him to play, he’d never get past.

The troll in the next room was unconscious or dead, but its epic stench was not. It tried to follow Harry into the next room.

The potion riddle was honestly not that hard. The flames still gave him pause. It seemed unwise to wear a cloak through them. He folded it up and tucked it into his pocket again. He took up the potion, but did not drink. There were flames before, and flames behind. That was a different riddle. He was being offered a chance to turn back. His scar itched like the first sign of a sunburn.

He thought of Aslan, and the message about a castle having deep roots. Here he was on his own journey into the underworld, like Summer. Like Orpheus, who sang the three-headed dog to sleep—he finally remembered that story and its sad ending. He’d been looking for his wife. Why was Harry here? Curiosity was a poor master.

No one could help him. He would have to decide for himself. And if he chose poorly, he would suffer the consequences. The shadows told him: his enemy was beyond that doorway. The enemy that had toyed with him all year. The enemy who had hurt him repeatedly. Perhaps he’d only stopped because he had other business with the treasure from vault 713. Harry put a hand on his chest. He’d swallowed lightning. His enemy drank unicorn blood to hold him to this world. What would it do for him to eat the inside out sun?

Who else was there to stop him but Harry? He drank the potion and walked through the fire. It lapped against his skin like dry water. 

Stone steps led him down towards a chamber. Everything looked old, but curiously empty as if someone had built this place a long time ago but never put it to use. Harry listened so hard he could swear he heard his ear hairs rubbing together. There was a voice ahead, or two voices—yes, one spoke over the other in an insistent murmur.

His fingers flexed towards the invisibility cloak. He made himself stop. Wizards knew about invisibility. He would be detected in this small space. The cloak would be better to help him escape. Like he should have done, should do, but didn’t. He went forward.

Harry took two more steps down, and caught sight of an item he’d never forget: the Mirror of Erised. This was all a trap and now he was caught too. Delicate tendrils of mist rose from its surface. The man standing in front of murmured in the two voices, as if riddling himself. He stopped and turned slowly. It was Quirrell—not hard to guess unless someone else in Hogwarts was wearing a purple turban.

“Welcome, Harry Potter.” He did not stutter at all.

“Professor.” His scar ached. He should have been more wary of Quirrell, since DADA was the class where most of his scar pain occurred. He’d taken Quirrell’s mannerisms at face quality. He’d been warned to pay attention.

“How considerate of you to follow me. Now I won’t have to go looking for you.” He snapped his fingers and conjured ropes wrapped around Harry.

Harry stayed on his feet but he couldn’t get at his wand. And if he had, what would he cast? He wriggled his wrist hopefully.

Quirrell turned back to the mirror. “I see the stone. I’m presenting it to my master…” he held out his cupped, empty hand. 

“Use the boy,” said the other voice. It came from the shadows wreathed Quirrell’s head better than any turban.

Harry looked past Quirrell and into the Mirror. There he stood tied up like a fool. His mother wore a wry smile and his father was laughing. His own reflection winked at him and made a slithery motion. The ropes coiled around him like, no, they were serpents.

“Come here, Potter.”

Quirrell gestured impatiently and the ropes fell away. Harry walked up to join Quirrell. This was no truce, only the pause before the reveal. “This mirror is a trap, Professor. You look into it and it looks into you.”

Quirrell’s hand locked onto his shoulder. “What does it see in you, Potter?”

“It steals dreams. That’s what I see. The deep rotted dreams of the dead.”

The second voice laughed. “He isn’t wrong. I will speak to him.”

“Master, no, you must—”

“Do as I say.”

Quirrell let go of Harry’s shoulder and Harry took a step back. Quirrell began to undo his turban. His eyes grew fixed like a blind person’s. The purple folds fell away to the floor. Behind him, reflected in the mirror, was another face, barely formed, slits for nose and mouth, and red eyes. His scar felt like fire crawling over his face. “Voldemort.”

Around the reflection of Voldemort’s face, the mirror changed. Shapes slunk out of the reflection of every shadowy crevice. They were four legged animals, white, with red eyes and ears. Pigs or cats or dogs, he could not tell which.

Quirrel’s face had slumped like softening wax. He turned around. The motion of his body, that puppet articulation, shed horrible light on the blood drinker from the forest. This was not someone to turn Harry’s back on, even to flee.

“That senile fool Dumbledore hid a certain trinket in this mirror. I know how his mind works. A child can retrieve it. I will reward you in ways you cannot imagine. This antique glass cannot fathom the dreams I offer you. All you have to do, is look in the mirror, and give me the stone.”

“Do you see me beside you, giving it to you?” Mirror Harry’s forehead was bleeding. A hand lifted to clear the blood away from his eye and Harry’s own arm twitched in response. Mirror Harry smiled and held out his bloody hand to the white beasts. They put their sharp snouts to it, scenting. His flesh hand chilled as if plunged into a bank of snow and he pushed it into his pocket. Something heavy settled into place against the top of his thigh, under his fingers.

“He has it. Take it, Quirrell, you fool.”

Harry was transfixed by the image in the mirror. He didn’t try to get away until Quirrell grabbed his icy hand from his pocket. Harry flinched back, but already Quirrell was staggering back. The hand that had touched Harry’s was crumbling away like dried, cracked clay. The surface of the mirror heaved with red eyes and white fangs. There was a sound, too, soft as if distant but close at his ear: the baying of hunting hounds.

“Kill him and be done!” commanded the dreadful voice. 

Quirrell’s unbroken hand raised his wand. “Avada keda—”

Pain lanced Harry’s forehead, but he grabbed at Quirrell’s wand hand. The Defence Professor’s flesh started to crumble. He screamed. Shadows boiled up from his head, but white fangs tore at them, red mouths bit.

Ice filled Harry’s veins. The trusty sigil that warmed his feet failed before it. The hole-y stone broke. He sank down. The swarm of shadows was on him and over him. He curled his body around the lightning in his core and held to it. There was no more.

His nose itched: that was all the proof of life he needed. Surely a well-regulated afterlife would not include itches. Harry rubbed his nose against the cotton covered pillow. It smelt of lavender. Light pried at his eyes and he curled up on himself again.

A cool, damp cloth stroked at his face. It felt good in the moment. Then his body informed him that it was sore everywhere. It might even have grown new bits to be sore so it could make it clear to him that he was a bad body owner. He took a deep breath anyway. Lightning flickered under his breast bone. Harry tried slitting an eye open.

“If you need more sleep, Mr. Potter, I’m afraid we’re going to have to check you over first. I’ll try not to jostle you.” Madam Pomfrey incanted an unfamiliar spell. He swore he could feel it poking and prying. He curled some unfamiliar bit around the lightning. Didn’t he get to have secrets of his own?

Some of the light went away, and a coverlet was tugged up to his jaw. Harry slid back down into his own loyal shadows.

When he woke again, Professor Dumbledore was sitting by his bed, reading. The deja vu made him dizzy. “’s’ tha’ W’ouse?”

“Nothing so cheerful. Welcome back, Harry.”

“Wha’ ‘appen?” Harry dragged himself out of nothingness. He was no longer sore but his body had not forgiven him.

Madam Pomfrey came over and wiped his face clean and gave him a sip of water. “I’ll bring you a soft egg custard,” she promised. “You’re getting better every minute.” She bustled away again.

Dumbledore waited for her to go. “I was hoping you could answer that question for me, Harry. Some of it is clear. Some of it I believe I have guessed.”

Harry licked his lips and felt the cracked skin under his tongue. He shuddered. “Professor Quirrell?”

“Alas, he is no more.”

He looked up into those mild blue eyes. He may have glared. “He was carrying around Voldemort under his turban. When he touched me he started to fall apart.”

“That must have been dreadful to see.”

It had been. “What was in my pocket? I mean, the thing that was in the vault, that he wanted. It was in the Mirror, somehow, wasn’t it?”

“It was an alchemical creation known as the Philosopher’s Stone. It has many properties, but Voldemort sought it for its ability to sustain life. He would have been able to revive himself in full and not live a parasite existence on the body of another.” Dumbledore took off his glasses and polished them. “I say was, as there is not much left of it. Having it on you protected you from Voldemort’s errant spirit as it broke free of Quirrell’s dying body. That is a guess, by the way. I have sent the remnant back to its owner, who plans to destroy the rest so that it no longer offers temptation.”

“Is it the only one?”

“The only one known to have been made, though many others have tried. Alchemy is a very exacting art. Occasionally I teach it when there are qualified students who are interested. It is N.E.W.T. level magic.”

“He’s why my scar’s hurt all this year.”

“Yes.”

“So is he, um, dead? Voldemort? Dead dead?”

“As much as I wish I could reassure you, I do not believe that is so. Nor will he be content with the half-life he leads, but will seek to return to strength and power again.”

Harry wriggled down into the bed. This was not unexpected but still unwelcome. “Why does he want me dead?”

“It must be enough for now to know that he does.” Harry’s frown did not move the Headmaster. “You are too young to seek this fight, Harry. Remember, you chose to follow him down to the Mirror. And he toyed with you rather than simply killing you outright, that being his nature. You cannot count on him always making such mistakes.”

“Luck doesn’t like to be counted on.” Harry was tired and hungry. The pit in his stomach would not let him slip back into slumber and now his brain was starting up like a hive rousing in the spring.

Dumbledore got up from his chair. “I have heard that fortune favours the bold. But I have also heard it said that fortune favours the prepared mind.”

Before he could move away, Harry asked, “Why do I have to go back to the Dursleys? They don’t want me there.” He immediately regretted asking like a whingy baby, but once again, he’d opened his mouth and said it.

The Headmaster’s normally serene expression faltered. “I’m sorry that you don’t get on with them. The bond of family is precious and irreplaceable, but that does not mean it is easy. It is there that we find both great strength and great pain. Professor Flitwick has taken action on your behalf, Harry. Will you see how that works out?”

Harry could stop himself from squirming in embarrassment though the tidal wave of red in his face gave it away despite his efforts. “Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

Madam Pomfrey brought the custard, which was easy to eat up and quieted his belly.

She allowed him visitors after. His dorm mates came in solemnly. Harry sipped his cup of lukewarm tea. What could he say to them, ‘oh, you know, I did in Voldemort again, really, the silly chap doesn’t know when to quit’? It was kind of horribly true in the worst ways and the best ways were all fake.

“You look a bit peaky for someone who’s been asleep almost three days,” said Kevin tentatively.

“You mean it’s Monday? No one’s said.”

“So what happened? Last we saw you was coming down from the clock tower.”

“I heard music, and followed it. It was not the best decision I ever made.” He shook his head. “I don’t think I know the whole story. You know about the theft from Gringotts?”

They nodded.

“It was already gone, because Hagrid got it out the day he and I went to my vault. Professor Dumbledore concealed it at the school. It was Professor Quirrell trying to steal it.”

“Quirrell? Q-q-quirrell?” doubted Michael Corner.

“Yeah.”

“So what was it?”

Harry looked around at their curious faces. They all looked so young and innocent. Telling them the whole story seemed wrong, a burden they didn’t deserve. But Voldemort was coming back, and a lot of people were in danger. He looked up at Kevin Entwhistle. His growth spurt was kicking in; he was taller than Lisa now. He had a little sister who he expected would come to Hogwarts herself in a couple of years. Both of them Muggleborn with no known wizard relatives. Prime targets for people like Draco Malfoy, and the people who’d taught Draco to be Draco.

“It was an alchemical substance that he was trying to get to bring Voldemort back.”

Everyone but Kevin flinched. Kevin looked confused. “The dead guy? Is that a thing that happens? How can History of Magic class be so boring? Binns never talks about this stuff. The only thing close is in that Beedle story about the three brothers. I thought that was just a children’s book.”

“No, it does not happen,” said Anthony with more authority and less pomposity than usual. “But people have tried. No good ever comes of it for anyone.” He was staring a hole in Harry. “We’re keeping you up, Harry. You still look exhausted. You’ve got smudges under your eyes like bruises. Let’s let him rest, gentlemen.”

“There’s still the chess tournament final and the Quidditch championship, Harry. Maybe you’ll be able to attend,” said Terry as Kevin gently shoved him towards the door.

“I will if I can.”

The next morning after breakfast, all the Ravenclaw first years met with Professor Dumbledore, Professor Burbage, and Professor Flitwick. Hermione Granger was there too.

“I’d like to thank you all for your participation in the Art Appreciation activity. You may have noticed that you were awarded some House points. This reflects that your group was the most enthusiastic and persistent in exploring the castle. The portraits also reported favourably on your group for your courtesy and interest in history. This game was not meant to have any reward other than the fun of the activity, but Professor Flitwick and I feel the points are well deserved. We would also like to take your picture to post in the trophy room. Please form up, tallest to the rear.”

Professor Burbage was apparently there only to take the photograph. She had a hard time of it, as Su Li kept leaking happy tears and looking guilty about spoiling the shot. Morag finally administered a surreptitious pinch to help her settle down.

Harry spent the time after the Leaving Feast packing up his things. He had more than he came with, but his belongings were still very few. For his own peace of mind, he cast Monstrant Libri a few times around the dorm and the common room. He was safe, but Terry Boot had an overdue book under his bed. He rushed out to return it. Harry sat on his eagle bed. It wouldn’t miss him; he would miss it. Six more years didn’t seem long enough.

Tomorrow morning they would have breakfast. Just as they had moved to their rooms, the students’ trunks would be moved to the train. The Hogwarts Express would carry them all down to London. He wondered if the Dursleys would remember to come get him.

He wondered if he wished they’d forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much everyone who has read, and those who have kudo'ed, and those who have commented. I have such mad respect for Rowling's work, rich mine that it is for fandom. I have tried to weave my story through the spaces in hers, and get to the same places in a different way. I have read many good fics for this fandom and hope mine is a worthy contribution. Nor would I have got here without the work of William Butler Yeats. Thanks, Mr. Yeats and Ms. Rowling.


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